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A MODERN PYRAMID 



TO COMMEMORATE 



A SEPTUAGINT OF WORTHIES. 



I 



MODERN 



PYRAMID 



TO COMMEMORATE 



A SEPTUAGINT OF WORTHIES. 



BY 



MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, ESQ. M. A. 



^ 



OF CHRISTCHURCH, OXFORD. 

AUTHOR OP 

PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY," ETC. 




LONDON : 
JOSEPH RICKERBY, SHERBOURN LANE, 

KING WILLIAM STREET, CITY. 



1839. 






LONDON ; 

PRINTED B7 JOSEPH RICKBUBYj 

8HERB0URN LANE. 



€©^€(B^€^. 



Page 

PREFACE . , . . ix 

THE VISION ... 1 

I. ABEL . . . .11 

II. ENOCH .... 16 

III. ZOROASTER . . .20 

IV. ABRAHAM ... 23 

V. SEMIRAMIS . . . .28 

VI. JOSEPH . . . . 32 

VII. MOSES . . . .35 

VIII. DAVID - . . 39 

IX. SOLOMON . . .43 

X. HOMER ... 47 

XI. ISAIAH . . . .53 

XII. SOLON .... 60 

XIII. ^sop . . . .64 

XIV. SAPPHO . . . .70 

XV. PYTHAGORAS . . .77 

XVI. CONFUCIUS ... 84 

XVII. PINDAR . . . .89 



VI 





CONTENTS. 


XVIII. 


ARISTIDES 


XIX. 


JESCHYLUS 


XX. 


, HERODOTUS . 


XXI. 


HIPPOCRATES 


XXII. 


THUCYDIDES . 


XXIII. 


SOCRATES . 


XXIV. 


PLATO . 


XXV. 


DEMOSTHENES 


XXVI. 


ARISTOTLE 


XXVII. 


PHOCION . 


XXVIII. 


PHIDIAS . 


XXIX. 


EPICURUS 


XXX. 


MARCELLUS 


XXXI. 


HIPPARCHUS . 


XXXII. 


CORNELIA 


XXXIII. 


VIRGIL 


XXXIV. 


HORACE . 


XXXV. 


MARY THE VIRGIN 




THE TOPSTONE. . 


XXXVI. 


ST. JOHN 


XXXVII. 


ST. PAUL . 


LXXVIII. 


ZENOBIA 


XXXIX. 


COLOMBA . 


XL. 


BEDE . 


XLI. 


CHARLEMAGNE 


XLII. 


HAROON ALRASCHID 


XLIII. 


ALFRED 



Page 
94 

97 

103 
109 
113 
117 
121 
124 
127 
130 
139 
144 
147 
151 
155 
158 
163 
170 
174 
179 
185 
191 
194 
198 
201 
206 
209 



CONTENTS. VU 

Page 

XLIV. DANTE . . 212 

XLV. TELL . . . 217 

XLVI. PETRARCH . . 221 

XLVII. COLUMBUS . . . 226 

XLVIII. RAFFAELLE . . 230 

XLIX. BAYARD . . , 234 

L. LUTHER , . 238 

LI. JANE GREY . . 241 

LII. SHAKSPEARE . . 245 

LIII. CERVANTES . . 248 

LIV. HARVEY . . 251 

LV. EVELYN . . . 255 

LVI. MILTON . , 258 

LVII. ISAAK WALTON . . 262 

LVIII. ISAAC NEWTON , . 267 

HX. FENELON . . . 271 

LX. CZAR PETER . . 275 

LXI. HANDEL . . . 278 

LXII. WESLEY . , 284 

LXIII. LINN.^US . . , 287 

LXIV. JOHNSON . . 290 

LXV. GALVANI , . . 293 

LXVI. WASHINGTON . . 298 

LXVII. HOWARD . . . 303 

LXVIII. KLOPSTOCK . . 308 

LXIX. NELSON . . . 312 

LXX FELIX NEFF . . 317 



" VIRTUTEM INCOLUMEM ODIMUS, 

SUBLATAM EX OCULIS QU^RIMUS INVIDI.' 



HORACE. 



THE MULTITUDE OF THE WISE IS THE WELFARE 
OF THE WORLD." SOLOMON. 



PREFACE, 



A PREFACE is allowed to be the writer's privilege, 
and a short one is believed to be the reader's plea- 
sure: the former, because a little explanation and 
excuse are matters alike of private benefit and of 
public courtesy ; the latter, because much of these 
should be left to the suggestions of a charitable 
world, and curiosity be taxed with no delay on the 
threshold of a new book. 

It may, then, be acceptable, as well as advantage- 
ous, briefly to answ^er a few probable objections on 
the surface. If any one, looking through the vista 
of past ages, and taking note of the goodly company 
of admirable men who from time to time have done 
honour to humanity, shall accuse us, as perhaps he 



X PREFACE. 

may, of an unwise selection, let him be content to 
know that our worthies, as a whole, have been 
chosen in furtherance of one special plan, and taken 
as individuals, were men generally excellent in their 
generation. If a protest be made, as perhaps it will, 
against a mingling of characters and subjects, sacred 
with profane, let it be noted, that, the order of time 
having been followed, such a mixture was unavoid- 
able. If the moral of the book be sought for, let 
it be found in the perusal : and if a man desire to 
judge aright, let him in candour hear us to the end. 

By some minds, the very different styles of the 
introductory Vision and succeeding pages vvdll be 
objected as incongruous; let such consider the dif- 
ference of subjects, and neither expect Fancy to be 
wingless, a mere Musa pedestris, nor Judgment to 
walk in Mercury's talaria. 

With respect to the prose portion of the volume, 
many readers may be disappointed at finding it 
made up of brief essays, mixing fact with specula- 
tion, instead of sober biography condensed from En- 
cyclopaedias ; many more will most assuredly be 



PREFACE. Xi 

oiFended at the exhibition of the author's politics, 
although these are not the result of party spirit, but 
of deliberate conviction ; some again may think dif- 
ferently on religious topics, or vote for their exclu- 
sion altogether; others may dravr opposite infer- 
ences from the same historical questions; while a 
last class of hypothetical readers may perceive evil 
where none was meant, or overlook what is intended 
to do good. 

As to the poetical part, objections may be urged 
against the exclusive adoption of the sonnet, in pre- 
ference to the varieties of lyric composition : but 
the writer has aimed at uniformity, and has selected 
that mode which he hoped was the most classical, 
although he has felt it greatly the most difficult. 

Where translations occur, those who are not con- 
versant with the classics, and with ancient metres, 
will have more to bear with, than even the scholar, 
who may truly accuse us of injustice : the idea of ren- 
dering a poet syllable for syllable in his own rhythm 
is believed to be a new one, and the wiser part of 
mankind looks upon novelty with suspicion : at any 



Xll PREFACE. 

rate, no more of these close versions have been 
here presented, than were necessary for making the 
experiment. 

To conclude, let us remember the lesson taught 
by the too complaisant painter, and not hope for 
impossible unanimity; let the writer's fashion be 
as unshackled as the reader's judgment; for he, who 
attempts to please all, will only compromise his own 
honesty, and may fail in pleasing any. 



THE VISION 



INTRODUCTORY. 



I WAS walking in ray garden at noon : and I came to 
the sun-dial, where, shutting my book, I leaned upon 
the pedestal, musing ; so the thin shadow pointed to 
twelve. 

Of a sudden, I felt a warm sweet breath upon my 
cheek, and, starting up, in much wonder beheld a 
face of the most bewitching beauty close beside me, 
gazing on the dial : it was only a face ; and with 
earnest fear I leaned, stedfastly watching its strange 
loveliness. Soon, it looked into me with its fascinat- 
ing eyes, and said mournfully, " Dost thou not know 
me ?" — but I was speechless with astonishment: then 
it said, "Consider :" — with that, my mind rushed into 
me like a flood, and I looked, and considered, and 
speedily vague outlines shaped about, mingled with 
floating gossamers of colour, until I was aware that 
a glorious living creature was growing to my know- 
ledge. 

So T looked resolutely on her, (for she wore the 
garb of woman,) gazing still as she grew : and again 

B 



2 THE VISION. 

she said mildly, " Consider : " — then I noted that from 
her jewelled girdle upwards, all was gorgeous, glist- 
ening, and most beautiful ; her white vest was rarely- 
worked with living flowers, but brighter and sweeter 
than those of earth ; flowing tresses, blacker than 
the shadows cast by the bursting of a meteor, and, 
like them, brilliantly interwoven with strings of light, 
fell in clusters on her fair bosom ; her lips were 
curled with the expression of majestic triumph, yet 
wreathed winningly with flickering smiles ; and the 
lustre of her terrible eyes, like suns flashing dark- 
ness, did bewilder me and blind my reason : — Then 
I veiled mine eyes with my clasped hands ; but again 
she said, " Consider ;" — and bending all my mind 
to the hazard, I encountered with calmness their 
steady radiance, although they burned into my brain. 
Round about her sable locks was as it were a 
chaplet of fire ; her^right hand held a double-edged 
sword of most strange workmanship, for the one 
edge was of keen steel, and the other as it were the 
strip of a peacock's feather ; on the face of the air 
about her were phantoms of winged horses, and of 
racking-wheels: and from her glossy shoulders 
waved and quivered large dazzling wings of irri- 
descent colours, most glorious to look upon. 

So grew she slowly to my knowledge ; and as I 
stood gazing in a rapture, again she muttered sternly, 
— " Consider 1" — Then I looked below the girdle 
upon her flowing robes : and behold they were of dis- 
mal hue, and on the changing surface fluttered fearful 



THE VISION. 3 

visions : I discerned blood-spots on them, and ghastly 
eyes glaring from the darker folds, and, when these 
rustled, were heard stifled moanings, and smothered 
shrieks as of horror : and I noted that she stood 
upon a wreath of lightnings, that darted about like 
a nest of young snakes in the midst of a sullen cloud, 
black, palpable, and rolling inwards as thick smoke 
from a furnace. 

Then said she again to me, " Dost thou not know 
me ?" — and I answered her, — " O Wonder, terrible in 
thy beauty, thy fairness have I seen in dreams, and 
have guessed with a trembling spirit that thou walk- 
est among fears ; art thou not that dread Power, 
whom the children of men have named Imagination ?" 
— And she smiled sweetly upon me, saying, " Yea, my 
son : " and her smile fell upon my heart like the sun 
on roses, till I gi*ew bold in my love and said, " O 
Wonder, I would learn of thee ; show me some 
strange sight, that I may worship thy fair majesty in 
secret." 

Then she stood like a goddess and a queen, and 
stretching forth her arm, white as the snow and glit- 
tering with circlets, slowly beckoned with her sword 
to the points of the dial. There was a distant rush- 
ing sound, and I saw white clouds afar off dropping 
suddenly and together from the blue firmament all 
round me in a circle : and they fell to the earth, and 
rolled onwards, fearfully converging to where I stood; 
and they came on, on, on, like the galloping cavalry 
of heaven ; pouring in on all sides as huge cataracts 

B 2 



4 THE VISION. 

of foam ; and shutting me out from the green social 
world with the awfal curtains of the skies.-— Then, 
as my heart was failing me for fear, and for looking 
at those inevitable strange oncomings, and the fixt 
eyes of my queenlike mistress, I sent reason from 
his throne on my brow to speak with it calmly, and 
took courage. 

So stood I alone with that dread beauty by the 
dial, and the white rolling wall of cloud came on 
slowly around with suppressed thunderings, and the 
island of earth on which I stood grew smaller and 
smaller every moment, and the garden-flowers faded 
away, and the familiar shrubs disappeared, until the 
moving bases of those cold mist-mountains were 
fixed at my very feet. Then said to me the glorious 
Power, standing in stature as a giant, — " Come ! why 
tarriest thou ? Come !" — and instantly there rushed 
up to us a huge golden throne of light fiUagree-work, 
borne upon seven pinions, whereof each was fledged 
above with feathers fair and white, but underneath 
they were ribbed batlike, and fringed with black 
down : and all around fluttered beautiful winged 
faces, mingled and disporting with grotesque figures 
and hideous imps. Then she mounted in her pomp 
the steps of the throne, and sat therein proudly. 
Again she said to me, " Come ! " — and I feared her, for 
her voice was terrible ; so I threw myself down on 
the lowest of the seven golden steps, and the border 
of her dark robe touched me. Then was I full of 
dread, hemmed about with horrors, and the pinions 



THE VISION. O 

rustled together, and we mshed upward like a flame, 
and the hurricane hastened after us : my heart was 
as a frozen autumn-leaf quivering in my bosom, and 
I looked up for help and pity from the mighty Power 
on her throne ; but she spumed me with her black- 
sandalled foot, and I was thrust from my dizzy seat, 
and in falling clutched at the silver net-work that lay 
upon the steps as a carpet, — and so 1 hung; my 
hands were stiffly crooked in the meshes like eagle's 
talons, my wrists were bursting, the bones of my 
body ached, and I heard the chill whisper of Death, 
(who came flitting up to me as a sheeted ghost,) bid- 
ding my poor heart be still : yet I would live on, I 
would cling on, though swinging fearfully from that 
up-rushing throne ; for my mind was unsubdued, and 
my reason would not die, but rebelled against his 
mandate. And so the pinions flapped away, the 
dreadful cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the 
waterspout, raced the whirlwind, hunted the thunder 
to his caverns, rushed through the light and wind- 
tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the 
thick sea of ice, that like a globe of hollow glass 
separates earth and its atmosphere from superambient 
space, and flying forward through the airless void, 
lighted on another world. 

Then triumphed my reason, for I stood on that si- 
lent shore fearless though alone, and boldly up- 
braided the dread Power that had brought me 
thither, — " Traitress, thou hast not conquered ; my 
mind is still thy master, and if the weaker body failed 



6 THE VISION. 

me, it hath been filled with new energies in these 
quickening skies : I am immortal as thou art ; yet 
shalt thou fear me, and heed my biddings : where- 
fore hast thou dared — ?" but my wrathful eye looked 
on her bewitching beauty, and I had no tongue to 
chide, as she said in the sobriety of loveliness, — " My 
son, have I not answered thy prayer ? yet but in 
part ; behold, I have good store of precious things to 
show thee : " with that, she kissed my brow, and I 
fell into an ecstacy. 

I perceived that I was come to the kingdom of 
disembodied spirits, and they crowded around me as 
around some strange creature, clustering with earnest 
looks, perchance to enquire of me somewhat from 
the world I had just left. Although impalpable, and 
moving through each other, transparent and half-in- 
visible, each wore the outward shape and seeming 
garments he had mostly been known by upon earth : 
and my reason whispered me, this is so, until the re- 
suiTection ; the seen material form is the last idea 
which each one hath given to the world, but the 
glorified body of each shall be as diverse from this, 
yet being the same, as the gorgeous tulip from its 
brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his spotted 
egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that 
had imprisoned it. — Then Imagination stood with 
me as an equal friend, and spake to me soothingly, 
saying, " Knowest thou any of these ? " — and I an- 
swered, "Millions upon millions, a wide-spread inun- 
dation of shadowy forms, from martyred Abel to the 



THE VISION. 7 

still-born babe of this hour I behold the gathered 
dead ; millions upon millions, like the leaves of the 
western forests, like the blades of grass upon the 
prairie, they are here crowding innumerable : yet 
should my spirit know some among them, as having 
held sweet converse with their minds in books ; only 
this boon, sweet mistress, from yonder mingled har- 
vest of the dead, in grace cull me mine intimates, 
that I may see them even with my bodily eyes." So 
she smiled, and waved her fair hand : and at once, a 
few, a very few, not all worthiest, not all best, came 
nearer to me with looks of love ; and I knew them 
each one, for I had met and somewhile walked with 
each of them in the paths of meditation ; and some 
appeared less beatified than others, and some even 
meanly clad as in garments all of eaith, yet I loved 
them more than the remainder of that crowded 
world, though not equally, nor yet all for merit, but 
in that I had sympathy with these as my friends. 
And each spake kindly to me in his tongue, so that 
I stood entranced by the language of the spirits. 
Then said my bright-winged guide, " Hast thou no 
word for each of these ? they love thy greeting, and 
would hear thee." But I answered, " Alas, beautiful 
Power, I know but the language of earth, and my 
heart is cold, and I am slow of tongue : how should 
I worthily address these great ones ? " — So with her 
finger she touched my lips, and in an inspiration I 
spake the language of spirits, where the thoughts 
are as incense to the mind, and the words winged 



8 THE VISION. 

music to the ear, and the heart is dissolved into 
streams of joy, as hail that hath wandered to the 
tropics : in sweetness I communed with them all, 
and paid my debt of thanks. 

And behold, a strange thing, changing the aspect 
of my vision. It appeared to me, in that dreamy 
dimness, whereof the judgment enquireth not and 
reason hath no power to rebuke it, that while I was 
still speaking unto those great ones, the several 
greetings I had poured forth in my fervour, — being 
as it were flowing lava from the volcano of my heart, 
— became embodied into mighty cubes of crystal; 
and in the midst of each one severally flickered its 
spiritual song, like a soul, in characters of fire. So 
I looked in admiration on that fashioning of thoughts, 
and while T looked, behold, the shining masses did 
shape up, growing of themselves into a fair pyramid : 
and I saw that its eastern foot was shrouded in a 
mist, and the hither western foot stood out clear 
and well defined, and the topstone in the middle was 
more glorious than the rest, and inscribed with a 
name that might not be uttered ; for whereas all the 
remainder had seemed to be earthborn, mounting 
step by step as the self-built pile grew wondrously, 
this only had appeared to drop from above, neither 
had I welcomed the name it bore in that land of 
spirits ; nevertheless, I had perceived the footmarks 
of Him, with whose name it was engraved, even on 
the golden sands of that bright world, and had wor- 
shipped them in silence with a welcome. 



THE VISION. y 

Thus then stood before me the majestic pyramid 
of crystal, full of characters flashing heavenly 
praise ; and I gloried in it as mine own building, 
haiUng the architect proudly, and I grew familiar 
with those high things, for my mind in its folly was 
lifted up, and looking on my guide, I said, " O Lady, 
were it not ill, I would tell my brethren on earth of 
these strange matters, and of thy favour, and of the 
love all these have shown me ; yea, and I would re- 
count their greetings and mine in that sweet lan- 
guage of the spirits." — But the glorious Wonder 
drew back majestic with a frown, saying, " Not so, 
presumptuous child of man ; the things I have 
shewn thee, and the greetings thou hast heard, and 
the songs wherewith I filled thee, cannot worthily 
be told in other than the language of spirits : and 
where is the alphabet of men that can fix that un- 
earthly tongue, — or how shouldst thou from hence- 
forth, or thy fellows upon earth, attain to its delicate 
conceptions ? behold, all these thine intimates are 
wroth with thee ; they discern evil upon thy soul : 
the place of their sojourn is too pure for thee." 

Then was there a peal of thunder, like the burst- 
ing of a world, whereupon all that restless sea of 
shadows, and their bright abode, vanished suddenly ; 
and there ensued a flood of darkness, peopled with 
shoaling fears, and I heard the approach of hurrying 
sounds, with demoniac laughter, and shouts coming 
as for me, nearer and louder, saying, " Cast out ! Cast 
out 1" and it rushed up to me like an unseen army, 
and I fled for life before it, until I came to the ex- 



10 THE VISION. 

treme edge of that spiritual world, where, as I ran 
looking backwards for terror at those viewless 
hunters, I leaped horribly over the unguarded cliff, 
and fell whirling, whirling, whirling, until my senses 
failed me — 

When I came to myself, I was by the sun-dial in 
my garden, leaning upon the pedestal, and the thin 
shadow still pointed to twelve. 

In astonishment, I ran hastily to my chamber, and 
strove to remember the strains I had heard. But, 
alas, they had all passed away : scarcely one dis- 
jointed note of that rare music lingered in my me- 
mory: I was awakened from a vivid dream, whereof 
the morning remembered nothing. Nevertheless, I 
toiled on, a rebel against that fearful Power, and de- 
prived of her wonted aid : my songs, invita Minerva, 
are but bald translations of those heavenly welcom- 
ings : my humble pyramid, far from being the vi- 
sioned apotheosis of that of a Cephren, bears an unam- 
bitious likeness to the meaner Asychian, the charac- 
teristic of which, barring its presumptuous motto, 
must be veiled in one word from Herodotus, (2-136,) 
— to save the bathos of translation, the cabalistic — 

Thus, in mere human guise, as of men, and to 
men, in much weakness and diffidence, the following 
pages have gi'own under my pen ; and that the chil- 
dren of my brain be not quite friendless, they are 
commended, candid reader, to thy favour. 



11 



a as e a. 

The fresh young world rejoic'd in its sweet prime, 
And all around was peace ; the leprous spot 
On her fair forehead Nature heeded not, 

So beauteously she smiled in love sublime : 

Yet, even then, upon thy gentle form 

Rush'd the black whirlwind of a brother's crime, 
Breaking that calm of universal love 

With the fierce blast of murder's pitiless storm, 
Awroth at goodness ; — thee, truth's stricken dove. 
First victim of oppression's iron feet. 

Religion's earliest martyr, slain by pride 
And man's self-righteousness, with praises meet 
Thee would my soul's affection humbly greet, 

Trusting the Lamb whereon thy faith relied. 



12 ABEL. 



Although we have no specific account in holy 
writ of the origin of sacrifices, still from allusion 
we may infer that they were in the earliest ages 
divinely instituted. Those who oppose the Christian 
doctrine of redemption are driven into many absur- 
dities to account for the universality of a notion so 
repugnant to nature and to reason, as that of destroy- 
ing the lives of innocent brute creatures, and offering 
them up to the just Creator in atonement for the sins 
of men. It is, in fact, impossible to account for it on 
any other principle than this; that God, in the 
promise to Eve of the seed that should bruise the 
serpent's head, revealed a vicarious Saviour, and 
ordained that a perpetual faith of the fulfilment of 
that promise should be kept alive by sacrifice. 
It is probable that our first parents used the or- 
dinance immediately after the curse pronounced 
upon the earth ; for we read that they were clad 
in coats of skins, which implies slain animals ; 
and we know that flesh was not given to man for 
food until the blessing bestowed upon Noah after 
the flood. 

"The learned Hugo Grotius, and others, profess to 
see nothing of a sacrificial and bloody rite, in Abel 
bringing the firstling of his flock and of the fat 



ABEL. 13 

thereof, to which, as unto Abel, the Lord had re- 
spect: they interpret it, as a simple presentation of 
a lamb, and ewe's milk, in acknowledgment of a 
shepherd's gratitude for increase : but to this per- 
nicious notion, one word from St. Paul affords suf- 
ficient answer ; in Hebrews, xi. 4, he calls Abel's 
oifering, a Ovaia, which can mean nothing else than 
strictly a slain sacrifice ; the idea of Porphyry that 
its root is Sv/jnaw being a grammatical absur- 
dity. The subject throughout is one of deep im- 
portance, and has been ably discussed by many 
theologians : let us briefly pursue a few other pass- 
ing thoughts. 

A more fearful proof of the fallacy involved in 
the popular saying, " Nemo repente fuit turpissimus," 
could not be met with than that afforded by the in- 
stance of Cain. Sin had indeed entered into the 
world, and death by sin; but the first dereliction of 
duty was as innocence itself compared with the first 
recorded crime. The primal act of disobedience 
had some seeming excuses ; the human frailty of 
coveting a thing forbidden ; the intrinsic worth of 
that knowledge, which, doubtless, was to have been 
withheld only for a while, as an evidence of self- 
denying duty ; and chiefly, the subtlety of an un- 
suspected tempter in the case of Eve, and every im- 
pulse of natural affection in that of Adam. The 
French have a juster saying than the Latins, " C'est 
le premier pas qui coute ;" for the first, to human 



14 ABEL. 

judgment, half- venial fault soon grew up to the 
heinous magnitude of atrocious crime : the egg of 
the cockatrice was barely laid, before the full-fledged 
monster was brooding over the habitations of men. 
Gentle Abel, the accepted worshipper of a God then 
familiar with his creatures, for the sole cause of su- 
perior goodness, was murdered in the eye of day by 
his only brother; a crime for which in all its features 
the w^orld has not furnished a pai'allel. 

There is, without doubt, much of hidden intention 
and instruction in the account of Abel's death. Gen. 
iv. 3, &c. Jehovah had instituted sacrifice as the 
legitimate mean of approach to Him by fallen crea- 
tures, and Abel, in obedience to the ordinance, 
offered with acceptance a lamb ; whereas Cain made 
the unwelcome, because unlawful, offering of fruits : 
conveying in apt images the covenant of grace and 
the covenant of works, the systems of revealed and 
of natural religion. 

Hebrews, xi. 4, " By faith Abel offered to God a 
more excellent sacrifice than Cain," &c., furnishes 
proof that Abel was a spiritual worshipper, who per- 
ceived the real meaning of a sacrifice, and it is there- 
fore somewhat remarkable that the Greek church, 
which has celebrated, if not canonized, every 
other worthy of scripture, has omitted " righteous 
Abel." 

Probably few readers will need to be reminded of 
the poem on the death of Abel, by Gessner of Zu- 



ABEL. 15 

rich, although it is now not so popular as its pastoral 
beauty, and occasionally its epic sublimity deserves. 
Our English translation by Mary Collyer is replete 
with accurate elegance, and falls little short of the 
original : a praise not common, nor easily to be de- 
served. 

x\bel is the only unmarried person whom we read 
of among the antediluvians. Even in that age of 
the world when increase was accounted the greatest 
of blessings, the first and most favoured martyr-ser- 
vant of God is taken from the earth and leaves no 
image of himself: assuredly, to preach the lesson 
that even the best of human treasures are but second- 
ary to those which are spiritual. Every other of the 
earliest men, whether bad as Cain, or virtuous as 
Seth, " begat sons and daughters : " but of Abel, the 
fairest character of all, the decree went forth from 
the chancery of heaven, " Write this man childless." 

It certainly appears to the writer an oversight in 
the structure of Gessner's Poem, to have bestowed a 
Thirza upon Abel : he should have been left isolated, 
as the first type of Christ, whom however the Romish 
Church has had the absurd audacity to betroth to 
one of her pseudo-saints. 



16 



Of whom earth was not worthy ; for alone 
Among the dense degenerate multitude, 
Witness to truth, and teacher of all good, 
Enoch, thy solitary lustre shone 
For thrice an hundred years, in trust and love 

Walking with God : so sped thy blameless life 
That He, thy worship, justly could approve 
His patriarch-servant, and when sinners scoff'd 

The bold prophetic woe with judgment rife 
Or hurl'd at thee their threatened vengeance oft, 
From those fell clamours of ungodly strife 
God took thee to himself; — behold on high 
The car of dazzling glory, borne aloft. 

Wings the blest mortal thro' the startled sky ! 



ENOCH. 17 



Enoch, the seventh from Adam, is mentioned by 
St. Paul in Hebrews, xi. 5, as having " pleased 
God ;" by St. Jude, 14, as having been a prophet 
of Christ's coming, and a preacher against the un- 
godliness of the world ; and by Moses, in Genesis, 
V. 2-2, as having walked with God three hundred 
years, — " and he was not, for God took him." The 
good Horatian rule of reason's discovery, " Nee Deus 
intersit,nisi dignus vindice nodus incident," by which 
indeed all divine interposition has been regulated, — 
(take as examples the raising of Lazarus, where the 
voice that awoke the dead unbound not the gi'ave- 
clothes, and that of Jairus's daughter, where the 
god-like command, " Talitha cumi," is succeeded by 
the homely direction, " give her something to eat,") 
— this acknowledged rule of economized power would 
induce us to believe that holy Enoch was translated 
to heaven on account of persecution on earth ; that 
he was taken away from the evil to come, and res- 
cued from the hands of murderous and wicked men. 
It is true indeed that in Elijah's case, 2 Kings, ii. 11, 
there appears no such necessity ; but we must re- 
member that Elias " went up by a whirlwind into 
heaven," that he might be the immediate harbinger 
of Christ to judgment, Malachi, iv. 5, although in- 



18 ENOCH. 

deed he was typified at the first advent by John the 
Baptist, Matt. xi. 14 ; also for the purpose of re- 
presenting " the goodly company of the prophets" 
at Christ's transfiguration, Mark, ix. 4. Perhaps 
Enoch may, in this light, be regarded as a represen- 
tative of the patriarchal era. 

As in the case of Jonah, the history of whom the 
ancients have recorded in their accounts of Arion, 
so, by a like evident adaptation of the name, they 
have preserved the traditional memory of Enoch in 
the story of one Annachus, who is said by the 
Greeks to have foretold Deucalion's flood ; (which, 
however, is not believed to be identical with Noah's.) 
There is nothing more interesting in classical read- 
ing, than the discovery of these incidental confir- 
mations of Scripture. 

St. Jude in the well-known passage quotes the book 
of Enoch ; but whether in so doing he intended to 
recommend it as authentic and inspired, is more than 
questionable : as well might we argue for the canon- 
ical reception of the works of Menander, because St. 
Paul incidentally cites one of his verses, and there- 
fore those who would reject the book of Jude in 
consequence, are guilty of great absurdity. Many 
of the fathers, and among them Tertullian, thought 
most highly of the prophecy attributed to Enoch : 
but the great stream of commentators and critics, 
headed by Augustine and Scaliger, consider that it 
bears evident marks of fabulous Rabbinism, or spu- 
rious Platonism. It is probable that some few of 



ENOCH. 19 

the genuine traditional sayings of the translated 
patriarch, as that quoted by St. Jude, are imbedded 
in the mass of mingled materials, known by the name 
of Enoch's prophecy. 

The luxuriant imaginations of Eastern writers have 
invented many wonderful matters concerning Enoch, 
but like most traditional or Talmudic stories, they 
are little worthy of repetition. Among other things, 
they pretend that he received direct from heaven 
thirty manuscripts on astrology, and other secret 
sciences, and that he was an adept in all kinds of 
knowledge : but there is no need to transplant such 
puerilities on the shores of the sober West. 



20 



Fathomless past ! what precious secrets lie 

Gulph'd in thy depths, — how brave a mingled 

throng 
Fathers of wisdom, bards of mighty song, 

Hearts gushing with warm hopes, and feelings high, 
Lovers, and sages, prophets, priests, and kings, 

Sleep nameless in thy drear obscurity : 

Fathomless past! — the vague conception brings, 
Amid thick-coming thoughts of olden things. 

Hoar Zoroaster, — as he walked sometime 
In shadowy Babel, and around him stood 
The strangely-mitred earnest multitude 

Listening the wonders of his speech sublime: 
Hail, mantled ghost, I track thy light from far, 
On the chaotic dark an exiled star. 



ZOROASTER. 21 



Zoroaster, — probably a made name, signifying in 
Hebrew with a Greek termination, banished star, 
— is supposed by many to have lived about 2300 
A. C. The history of this ancient astronomer and 
sage is little known, and it is difficult to separate his 
identity from others who have borne the like name : 
but there has come down to us generally a tradition 
of his great and acknowledged superiority over his 
cotemporary world. We read, that whereas open 
idolatry had enslaved the rest of men, Zoroaster 
alone preached the sublime doctrine of a one 
invisible Deity, admitting fire to be his emblem. 
There are said to be still in the East numerous tribes 
who follow him as their teacher, and when one man 
has exercised dominion over his fellows for upwards 
of four thousand years, it is only reasonable to sup- 
pose that he was excellent in his generation, and for 
the times in which he lived, enlightened. It is, no 
doubt, a vexata qusestio whether or not Zoroaster of 
Bactria, or Zoroaster of Babylon, be the greater 
man, and the founder of the sect : if so, his date must 
be brought nearer to us by almost two thousand 
years : but the silence of history gives us the privi- 
lege of choice. 

Learned men have variously supposed Ham, Moses, 



^2 



ZOROASTER. 



Osiris, Mithras, and several others, to have been re- 
spectively the same person as Zoroaster : with more 
probability Dr. Adam Clarke thinks him identical 
with Belteshazzar, or Daniel. Sir Walter Raleigh, 
in that work of infinite research, his " History of 
the World," lib. i. ch. 11, seems inclined to consider 
him a genuine Chaldsean sage of the most remote 
antiquity. 

By way of giving the reader a specific instance of 
the teaching of this ancient worthy, the following 
apt extract from Lord Lindsay's entertaining book 
on Egypt, (i. 185,) is here added : " The God, says 
the patriarchal Zoroaster, in his noble enumeration 
of the Almighty's attributes, is represented having a 
hawk's head : He is the Best, Incorruptible, Eternal, 
Unmade, Indivisible, most unlike every thing, the 
Author of all good, the Wisest of the wise." The 
mystical part of such theology consisting of emblems, 
a hawk, for example, figming perfection of sight, or 
omniscience, and swiftness of presence, or ubiquity, 
speedily, as was natural, degenerated into common 
idolatry ; but assuredly the description given above 
of the Supreme Being by a native of heathen Baby- 
lon is among the most sublime ever penned by mor- 
tal hand. In fact, the worst conceptions of the Deity 
weremost rife among men at that period of the world's 
history, which was equally remote from the patri- 
archal and the Christian eras. The idolatry of ex- 
treme antiquity was not the gross system which it 
afterwards became. 



23 



Hail, friend of God, the paragon of faith ! 
Simply to trust, unanswering to obey, 
This was thy strength ; and happy sons are they 
Father, who follow thee thro' life and death. 
Ready at His mysterious command 

The heart's most choice affectionate hopes to slay 
With more than martyr's suicidal hand. 
Their sole sufficing cause, — Jehovah saith, — 

Their only murmured prayer, — His will be done : 
Ev'n so, thy god-like spirit did not spare 
Thy cherished own, thy promised only son. 
Trusting that He, whose word was never vain, 

Could raise to life the victim offered there, 
And to the father give his child again. 



24 ABRAHAM. 



Scripture is full of moral tests : it is capable of 
infinite misconceptions ; it is easily perverted, if men 
will ; and the things which should have been for 
their health, are unto them an occasion of falling. 
There is doubtless something of providential intent 
in the contemptible facility which the highest themes 
afford for the lowest humour ; nothing is more easy 
than for a scoffer to draw poison from the fountain 
of truth. 

In exemplification of this, it will be sufficient to 
take for a moment the infidel view of the case of 
Abraham's intended sacrifice, if only to act as a foil 
to the Christian's interpretation. — What ? ai*e we to 
receive for an exemplar of moral conduct a man, 
who could deliberately attempt the murder of his only 
child ? are we to be told that a merciful Deity, and 
not some Moloch of a madman's heated fancy, com- 
manded the bloody rite ? are we to admire the dupli- 
city of the speeches, " We will go yonder, and wor- 
ship, and come again unto you, — My son, God will 
provide himself a lamb ?" — To these, and such 
objections our answer is uniform : the apparent 
evil is merely a reflection of the unbeliever's heart ; 
if he will but see with our eyes, the dark pic- 
ture will be as the brightness of noonday. Abra- 



ABRAHAxM. '2 

ham, the only witness upon earth of a loving and 
true God, was called upon to give proof that he re- 
lied implicitly upon His promises, power, and good- 
ness. He was commanded to deliver up the child, 
in whom all the earth was eventually to be blessed, 
as a sacrifice to Him who gave him : and the patri- 
arch cheerfully obeyed, though we may readily be- 
lieve not without the struggles of paternal agony, 
first, because he questioned not for a moment the 
right of the Creator to command, nor the ultimate 
mercy, wisdom, and propriety of the mandate ; and 
secondly, because (as we learn from lleb. xi. 19) lie 
accounted that God was able to raise his son up even 
from the dead, and fully expected that it should be 
so. He meant what he said in — ^'we will come bach;" 
for he trusted in the restoration of his son : he 
stopped not to reason about moral fitness, for he 
knew that God had spoken : and he rightly regarded 
that the mercy of his Maker would provide himself 
a lamb, or if indeed the rite must be paid, and Isaac 
must be that lamb, He would restore uninjured the 
seed of promise. When to all this, we add the af- 
fecting beauty and aptitude of the whole scene as 
applicable to the persons of the adorable Trinity in 
the scheme of salvation, of which it is more than pro- 
bable that the patriarch had a due conception, we see 
the sacrifice of Isaac in the light of an act at once 
most pious, most admirable and most heroic. 

Many of the profane writers speak of Abraham: 
Berosus calls him " just, and great, and skilled in 

c 



26 ABRAHAM. 

heavenly things;" Melo, the Jew hater, confirms 
Genesis in every particular of this patriarch's life : 
and so does Eupolemus, with other names little known 
to the general reader. Josephus, I. 8. § 2, informs 
us that Abraham " communicated to the Egyptians 
the art of arithmetic, and the science of astronomy, 
with which they were previously unacquainted ; and 
that Egypt was indebted for its wisdom to Chaldaea, 
as Greece was to Egypt :" many fables of the East 
are full of allusions to this patriarch's knowledge, 
power, and piety. 

The whole chapter of the great Jewish historian 
and general, which relates to the oflfering of Isaac, 
the 13th of the 1st book, is most beautiful, and 
places the conduct of both father and son in a very 
touching and amiable light : the father, in that " he 
thought it was not right to disobey God in anything;" 
the son, in that being " twenty-five years old," he 
" went immediately of himself to the altar to be sa- 
crificed :" and Josephus adds the words of the Al- 
mighty, saying, " It is not out of a thirst for human 
blood thou wert commanded to slay thy son, neither 
because God wished to deprive thee of him as a father, 
but to try and prove thee, whether indeed thou 
wouldst obey to the uttermost." We may remark 
that Josephus makes no mention of the figurative re- 
surrection, implied in the return of Isaac unharmed. 
Bishop Warburton thinks, that the saying of our 
Lord, " Abraham saw my day," &c., is a proof that 
in the name Jehovah -jireh, given to the mount on 



ABRAHAM. 27 

which Jesus afterwards suffered, Abraham prophe- 
sied the manifestation on the cross of incarnate 
Godhead. 

It is interesting to perceive, that the wise heathen, 
Seneca, entertains the same just ideas of implicit obe- 
dience which are so eminently characteristic of the 
Father of the faithful. The philosopher is found to 
speak as follows : " A law [or a mandate] should be 
brief, that it may be more easily retained by the un- 
learned, as if it were a voice sent from the gods : it 
should command, not argue, for nothing seems to me 
more frigid, or more foolish, than a law with a rea- 
son : tell me what you would have me do, I will not 
dispute about it, but obey, for in a law I require not 
reasons, but authority." So thought Seneca, and so 
did Abraham : if the mandate come indeed from 
heaven, Faith is not to wait for the tortoise step of 
Reason : her office, her nature, her name, imply not 
merely credence^ but obedience. 



c2 



28 



Stupendous Babylon ! before mine eyes 
Thy mountain walls, and marble terraces, 
Domes, temples, tow'rs, and golden palaces 

In visioned recollection grandly rise 

Huge and obscure, as icebergs in a cloud ; 
And mingling there a dense barbaric crowd 

Throng thy triumphal car with eastern state 

Moon of the world, Semiramis the Great ! 
Ambiguous shade of majesty supreme 

Upon the night of ages limn'd sublime, 
We think of thee but as a glorious dream. 

And, waiving those dark hints of unproved crime. 
Fain would we hope thee great and good combin'd 
To hail thee patriot Queen, and mighty Mind. 



SEMIRAMIS. *29 



The supercilious detraction which female character 
almost invariably meets with in the masculine page 
of history is several times alluded to in this volume. 
Greatness, especially when manifested in the weaker 
sex, has always been a target for the envenomed 
darts of envy ; 

" Saevius ventis agitatur ingens 
" Pinus, et celsse graviore casu 
" Decidunt turres, feriuntque summos 
Fulgura montes." 

but it is surely more philosophical, as well as more 
charitable to conclude that popular opinion would 
never long endure the blasting rule of monsters of 
depravity ; at least, in the absence of — '* most damn- 
ing proof," we ought not to believe that unequalled 
greatness is closely allied with unparalleled wicked- 
ness. If we are to credit the voice of common fame 
in both instances, there is much of similarity be- 
tween Assyrian Semiramis and Catherine Alexiewna 
II. of Russia, both in their public and private cha- 
racters : but, however opinions may be permitted to 
differ as to their respective moral delinquencies, no 
man would be hardy enough to affirm that they were 
not magnificent sovereigns, and the ruling spirits of 



30 SEMIRAMIS. 

their several eras. Semiramis is supposed to have 
lived about 1965 before Christ, and to have reigned 
twenty-five years : she is accused of many crimes, but 
would appear to have lived in the affection of her sub- 
jects, and to have died with their worship. The gallant 
Raleigh does not scruple to say, (i.l8*2,) *' As for her 
vicious life I ascribe the report thereof to the envious 
and lying Grecians : for delicacy and ease do more 
often accompany licentiousness in men and women, 
than labour and hazard do : and if the one half be 
true which is reported of this lady, then there never 
lived any prince or princess more worthy of fame than 
Semiramis was." It is commonly accounted a mark of 
high civilization, especially when we consider the 
antiquity of eastern prejudices respecting women, to 
find female sovereigns in the list of Assyrian, Egyp- 
tian, and Abyssinian monarchs ; and, if we had not 
even now extant the mouldering ruins of gigantic 
enterprise to witness it, this fact is alleged enough to 
render credible much that we hear of ancient excel- 
lence in the arts and sciences : it must however be 
taken merely as an evidence of high gallantry; for it is 
questioned by many wise men, adhuc sub judice lis, 
whether, as to female domination, the Salique law of 
good King Pharamond is or is not in effect one very 
wholesome for the interests of society, and strictly 
accordant with the revealed doctrine of headship. 
Mrs. Jameson's testimony upon this point is very 
decided : that lady says in her preface to the Lives 
of Female Sovereigns, " On the whole, it seems in- 



SEMIRAMIS. 31 

disputable that the experiments hitherto made in 
the way of female government have been signally 
unfortunate; and that women called to empire 
have been, in most cases, conspicuously unhappy 
or criminal. So that, were we to judge by the past, 
it might be decided at once, that the power which 
belongs to us, as a sex, is not properly, or naturally, 
that of the sceptre or the sword." This candid 
admission from one so competent, and, upon prin- 
ciples of human nature, in such a case so un- 
willing a witness, must have considerable weight : 
and in reference to the subject, it cannot escape 
the observation of some, that the prophet Isaiah 
enumerates among the woes of Israel, chap. iii. 12, 
" As for my people, children are their oppressors, 
and women rule over them." The condition of 
Spain and Portugal in our own day illustrates the 
cause and consequence. It will be profitable 
however to consider on the other hand, that the 
peculiar constitution which Tacitus lauds as the 
best, (Ann. iv. 33) is one almost independent of the 
advantages or disadvantages of sex ; that Edmund 
Burke was philosophically justified in his seeming 
paradox concerning the crown; and that, even if 
the verdict of history has hitherto been unsatis- 
factory, (a position which many think they have a 
right to dispute,) still the future is ever a fair field of 
hope open to all, and modems possess the incalculable 
advantage of being competent to profit by the eiTors 
of their ancestors. 



32 



3 © ^ e p 1, 

The true nobility of generous minds, 
Equal to either conquest, weal or woe, 
Triumphant over fortune, friend or foe. 
In thee, pure-hearted youth, its pattern finds : 
Child best-beloved of Israel's green old age, 

Innocent dreamer, persecuted slave. 
Good steward, unguilty captive, honour'd sage 
Whose timely counsel rescued from the grave 
Egypt's bronze children, and those exiled few 

Dwelling at Goshen, — Ruler, bom to save. 
How rich a note of welcome were thy due, 

O man much tried, and never found to fail ; 
Young, beauteous, mighty, wise and chaste and true, 
Hail, holy prince, unspotted greatness, hail ! 



JOSEPH. 33 



The idea of types being once given to the stu- 
dent of Scripture, examples of this kind of acted 
prophecy will rise to his mind in rich abundance. 
It requires very little either of imaginative power, 
or ingenious learning, to perceive at once the ulti- 
mate intentions of Joseph's chequered history ; every 
fact in his life, as in that of many other patriarchs of 
old time, being obviously typical of some circum- 
stance in the life of our Saviour. The subject is an 
extremely full one, and better fitted for a religious 
treatise than a few discursive remarks : it has more- 
over been so frequently and so well explained by 
divines, that further notice here might be deemed 
supererogatory. 

The memory of .Joseph, as a great public bene- 
factor, is cherished in Egypt to this day, and his 
personal beauty, alluded to in Genesis, xxxix. t), has 
ever been proverbial in the East. 

According to the learned Sir John Marsham, 
Joseph was the chief officer, or grand vizier of no 
less than four of the Pharaohs ; unfamiliar names, 
which it would serve no purpose to transcribe. It 
has more of interest to perceive that the consequen- 
ces of Joseph's dealing in the famine exist in Egypt to 
this very day ; for (Genesis, xlvii. 20) " Joseph bought 

c 5 



34 JOSEPH. 

all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh ; the Egyptians 
sold every man his field, because the famine pre- 
vailed over them ; so the land became Pharaoh's," — 
remaining so to this hour : the fellahs, or native in- 
habitants, being merely occupiers of the soil, the 
property of which is nominally in the Sultan, but 
actually vested in the present Pacha. Compare also 
Herodotus, Euterpe, 109, where the soil is all said to 
belong to the king of Egypt. 

Some of the hieroglyphical histories still extant 
on the walls of tombs in Thebes and Beni Hassan, 
possess a remarkable interest from their apparent re- 
ference to the sojourn of the Jews : in particular, 
there is figured in Wilkinson's Egypt, (2. 296.) a 
fresco picture, which has been supposed to represent 
the arrival of Jacob and his family on the invitation 
of Joseph. 



35 



How should I greet thee, God's ambassador, 
Great shepherd of the people, — how proclaim 
In worthiest song thy more than human fame 

Meek bard yet princely, vengeful conqueror, 
Leader, and lawgiver ? — thy hallowed name 

E'en now with fears the captive bosom fills, 
Though the dear love of thy grand Antitype 

In glad assurance thro' that bosom thrills : 
Alas, thy faithless tribes, for judgment ripe. 

Chose Ebal and the curse ; didst thou not heed 

Wlien these thy children dared the dreadful deed 
Whereathighnoonwasblind, — nor bless the grace, 
That shall that stain from crime's dark record wipe. 
And love once more the long-rejected race ? 



36 MOSES. 



A theme like the present should not be approached 
without a deep sense of veneration : Moses is emi- 
nently a sacred character, and the inspired writers 
ought perhaps, in one view of the case, to stand 
quite aloof from the mere human herd, among 
w^hom they are here chronologically mingled. It 
would give the writer much pain to be accused of in- 
stituting any improper comparisons between idol- 
atrous heathens, and the noted servants of the 
]\Iost High ; such is far from his intention : on 
principle however, he would not exclude holy men 
of God from a brief catalogue of worthies; and 
he did not wish to exclude all others: it is hoped 
that no very objectionable names will be found 
among the writer's favourites ; but it should always 
be remembered that we are to judge of men with 
reference to the circumstances round them ; and 
as men, with regard to their influence on their 
fellows, whether beneficial or otherwise. In this 
light, many names, seemingly incongruous, will be 
found admissible ; and perhaps the writer ought 
to state, in apology for the somewhat miscel- 
laneous list of contents, that he generally pro- 
fesses to touch upon his favourite authors, studies, 



MOSES. 37 

or notions. And with this clue, lector benevole, 
speed thou on thy way. 

Of Moses, nothing need here be repeated which 
can be found in the inspired volume : the date 
of his birth is disputed, but it is probably cor- 
rect to fix it at 1570, B. C. : he died at the age 
of one hundred and twenty, and to prevent idol- 
atry of his remains, it is said, in Deut. xxxiv. 6, 
that " the Lord buried him, and no man knoweth 
of his sepulchre." 

It is very interesting to find Herodotus bear- 
ing testimony to the consequences of the plagues 
of Egypt ; also Diodorns Siculus, and Slrabo, con- 
firming holy writ in many particulars. 

From the extreme antiquity of the works of 
Moses, it has long been an objection raised by 
sceptics, that the only method of writing then 
known was engraving on stones, and that the volu- 
minous character of the Pentateuch rendered this 
impossible : hence they infer that the books of 
Moses cannot be genuine or authentic, but the 
traditionary compilation of some later hand. But 
all this is founded on the extravagant assumption 
that every word w as sculptured upon tables of stone : 
an idea now completely subverted by the fact, 
which the hieroglyph ical researches of M. Cham- 
pollion have established, that the use of papyrus 
was long anterior to the age of Moses ; there being 
now extant at Turin an Egyptian writing on pa- 
pyrus, expounded to be an act of Thutmothsis III., 



38 MOSES. 

and accounted two hundred years older than 
the time of the Pharaoh, in whose reign Moses 
flourished. 

There can be no doubt, however, that some pas- 
sages have been added to the original text, by 
Joshua, or Ezra ; as for example the account of the 
death of Moses, which closes Deuteronomy. In 
Graves on the Pentateuch the enquirer will find every 
objection honestly stated, and luminously solved. 

From the very curious passage in St. Jude, con- 
cerning " Michael the archangel disputing with 
Satan about the body of Moses," taken in connection 
with the transfiguration on the mount, it has been 
imagined that Moses is one of those who, with 
Enoch, Elias, and our Saviour, are not in the state of 
disembodied spirits, but in that of the perfect re- 
surrection. 



39 



It is not for thy throne and diadem, 

Nor for the prowess of thy ruddy youth, 
Nor skill with gentle minstrelsy to soothe 

The spirit in its griefs, and banish them. 

We count thee blest ; these lesser stars of praise 
May well in lustrous beauty round thee blaze, 

Anointed monarch of Jerusalem ; 

But, that omniscient truth hath titled thee 

Man after God's own heart, — this name alone 
Doth, to its highest, mortal glory raise. 

And leave us wondering here : O favoured one, 
As to my Saviour's symbol, reverent 
And with such worship as befitteth me, 
So would I greet thee, royal penitent. 



40 DAVID. 



The types of our Lord Christ, which so remark- 
ably pervade the historical books of the Old Tes- 
tament, and indeed, (if it be not improper to say 
so,) constitute to us their chief value, form a system 
as worthy of the philosopher s attention as of the 
less reasoning acceptance of unlearned Christians. 
A most favourite principle it is in human nature, 
to follow examples ; and this fact explains the 
popular power of analogical argument, and the 
love of biography of which most men are sensible. 
A type was a form of setting Christ before men 
exactly adapted to their social nature, and the 
pre-eminence of David, the Beloved, (as his name 
signifies,) in this respect, has been the theme of 
divines in all ages. However, there is still very 
much of the antitypical scheme to be made up : 
we are yet to hear of " bringing the King back ; " 
and doubtless, every minute incident, as of Shimei, 
and Barzillai, &c., will be found to have its national 
counterpart hereafter. 

To explain allusions in sonnets that concern 
such characters would be to cast an imputation on 
the reader. 

Once for all, it is far from the intention of these 
sections to comment upon every phrase and image, 



DAVID. 41 

or with the blotting finger of notation to point 
out all the secret sense. Such a plan would 
generate more prose than the poetry could carry, 
and would he a method of swelling the volume, 
despicable from its very ease : added to which, it 
is more complimentary to the reader, and for that 
cause more worthy of the writer, to leave many 
things unexplained. In general, allusions will be 
obvious enough. 

Many subjects, briefly touched upon in these 
cursory remarks, would require a treatise for their 
several elucidation ; and the author has felt great 
difficulty in sufficient condensation : he is sensible 
that in some instances he may not have said enough 
to defend his positions from every opponent, (as 
perhaps, on Scriptural revision,) but it is really 
from the pressure of many matters : arguments and 
examples might often have been multiplied, but 
where one or two have been thought sufficient, 
the excess has been rejected : in fact among these 
brief essays, there will frequently be found little 
more than the seeds of thoughts, which he that 
so wills may cultivate at leisure : from the multi- 
tude of topics, and to produce variety, they are 
necessarily discursive : the opportunity has been 
taken to introduce original translations, and leave 
has been usurped to ramble at will to any subject 
at all connected with the character under consider- 
ation : in a word, while the author would acknow- 
ledge with gratitude the general debt which he 



42 DAVID. 

owes to the labour and genius of others, still he 
has endeavoured, often to the reader's loss, to avoid 
transcription from popular manuals, from a sense 
that to increase the bulk of a volume by such me- 
thods is not quite honest, and even if it were, would 
savour too strongly of inglorious ease. 



43 



Who hath not heard the trumpet of thy fame ? 
Or is there that sequestered dismal spot 
Where thy far-echoed glory soundeth not ? — 
The tented Arab still among his mates 
In wondrous story chaunts thy mighty name ; 

Thy marvels yet the fakir celebrates, 
Yea, and for Solomon's unearthly power 

The sorcerer yells amid his deeds of shame, 
Rifling the dead at midnight's fearful hour : 

Not such thy praise ; these savour of a fall 
Which penitence should banish from the mind ; 

We gladlier on thy sainted wisdom call. 
And greet thee with the homage of mankind 
Wisest, and mightiest, and first, of all. 



44 SOLOMON. 



Concerning Solomon so much is commonly known, 
that there is little excuse here to repeat the les- 
sons of our childhood. We assuredly have dis- 
tinct traces of his apostacy, and of the dreadful 
manner by which it was manifested, namely sor- 
cery and other ramifications of the black art, in 
the fact that even now among the mysteries of 
Egyptian, Chinese, and Asiatic magic, the name 
of Solyman, or Zuleyman, is still prominent, as a 
ruler of the spirits : see, in exemplification, the 
eighth and ninth of the Arabian Nights. There 
can be little doubt that with all the bold ambition 
of a towering mind, permitted for wise purposes 
to break into brief rebellion, Solomon practised 
those evil arts ; and the writer at least feels as 
little doubt that witchcraft and its like were in 
those ages of the world possible and real crimes ; 
that in fact, a league could be entered into with 
wicked spirits, and, if such guilt be now set out 
of the pale of Christendom, there is no telling 
how far it may actually exist within the bounds 
of Paynimrie : consult Mr. Lane's account of 
Egyptian magic, and that of other writers from the 
East. 

It occurs forcibly to the mind, how different 



SOLOMON. 45 

from the better choice of Solomon, would have been 
that of every Mr. Worldly-Wiseman of the age. 
There is a certain class of men among us, and' it 
is to be lamented a class very large and very spread- 
ing, in whose estimation money and money's-worth 
constitute the only riches ; they are, in the words 
of Young, 

" Bit by the rage canine of dying rich ;" 

the scales of their judgment, Aladdin-like, weigh 
nothing but gold ; they throw in no make-weight, 
as Brennus did ; (see Plutarch's Life of Camillus ;) 
their rule of life is — " facias rem, Si possis, recte, 
si non, quocunque modo rem ;" mental gifts, and 
spiritual privileges are viewed by minds so grovel- 
ling, merely as lucrative means to that all-absorbing 
end ; they hold religiously that " money makes 
the man;" they consider not what inward wealth 
may be the very beggar's portion ; they heed not 
what heart-poverty may gnaw the vitals of a Croesus. 
There are many poor rich men, and there are many 
rich poor men: the age needs to be converted 
from idolatry in this matter, for the image of Ne- 
buchadnezzar still has its million devotees. The 
wise man will feel richer in home happiness, in 
the love of nearest and dearest, in the power of 
religion, the peace of his conscience, the strength 
of his mind, and the luxuriance of his imagination, 
than " in thousands of gold and silver :" to use the 
beautiful language of Transatlantic Willis, 



46 SOLOMON. 

" He from the eyrie of his eagle thought 
Looks down on monarchs ;" 

whereas the mere idolater of gold, the Gallio caring 
for none of these things, who is incapable of great 
hopes, and generous sentiments, heaps up only un- 
satisfying treasure, and has just mind enough to 
make him miserable. 

" Wisdom is the principal thing : get wisdom, and 
with all thy getting get understanding." The choice 
of Hercules, virtue in preference to pleasure, handed 
down to us by Xenophon, is as well known among 
the Greeks, as that of Solomon, wisdom before 
riches, among the Jews : and it is impossible to say 
how far the profane hero is indebted for the credita- 
ble anecdote to the sacred king. The habit of Greece, 
one more useful than honest, was to appropriate to 
her own shores every thing in history or fable which 
should have more rightfully redounded to the honour 
of her neighbours. 



47 



Thou poor and old, yet ever rich and young, 
Ye sunless eyeballs, in all wisdom bright, 

Ti-avel-stain'd feet, and home-unwelcomed tongue, 

That for a pauper's pittance strayed, and sung. 
Where after-times the frequent acolyte 

Tracked those faint steps with worship, — at what time 
And where, thou untaught master, did the strings 

Of thine immortal harp echo sublime 

The rage of heroes, and the toil of kings ? 
Uncertain shadow of a mystic name, 
The world's dead praise, as Hellas' living shame. 

There is a mystery brooding on thy birth. 

That thee its own each willing soil may claim ; 

Thy fatherland is all the flattered earth. 



48 HOMER. 



Homer, a personage whose very name is a riddle, 
(being not impossibly the Hebrew word homerim, 
anglice " words," or as likely the Greek ofxripoQ, 
" blind,") is supposed to have flourished A. C. about 
900. His principal works are too well known to 
need mention, further than that the main subjects of 
the Iliad turn upon the wrath of Achilles, Ajax, 
Agamemnon, and others ; and that the Odyssey treats 
of the adventures of the king of Ithaca, and his com- 
panions, when returning to their homes, after the fall 
of Troy. Some learned men have gone the length of 
conjecturing that Solomon might have written the 
poems known by the name of "Homer," or " Epic," 
(words of similar signification in Hebrew and Greek,) 
during the period of his idolatrous apostacy: but 
this would appear to be little better than an ingeni- 
ous expansion of the argument implied in the 
possible etymology of the name. With respect to 
the birth-place of the poet, it is well known that 
many cities of Greece (" Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, 
Ithaca, Pylus, Argos, Athena,") in after-ages con- 
tended for the honour of his birth, by way of self- 
aggrandisement ; but perhaps, if the truth were told, 
all have equal claims, the fact being that there is 
no credible evidence on the subject; for to look ex- 



HOMER. 49 

temally, we have nothing but the assertions of inter- 
ested candidates; and internally there is perhaps no 
poet in any age who has communicated so little of 
himself in his works as Homer : it is also matter of 
history that the author of those immortal poems, the 
Iliad and the Odyssey, received divine honours in 
the very spots where it is likely that he had wandered 
as a homeless, and some think sightless, bard. For the 
matter of blindness, however, we have not the same 
satisfactory record of the fact, as that so beautifully 
furnished by our own Homer, Milton, in his indivi- 
dual case ; but the wanderings are credible enough, 
for troubadours, (to use an anachronism in terms,) and 
the oral diffusion of poetry are common to infant so- 
ciety in every land. It is just possible that the poems 
w^hich have come down to us from antiquity under 
the name of Homer, may, as to their genuineness 
and authenticity, be analogous to those we have in 
modern times received under the name of Ossian : 
namely, in both having been a collection of detached 
pieces, cemented and digested into one by a diligent 
master-hand ; and one meaning of the word o^rjpog, 
" joined together," w^ould seem to favour the notion. 
But after all, it is equally probable, if not more so, 
that one master-hand wrote it all, for unity of design 
and consistency of execution are generally apparent 
throughout, and the art of writing is doubtless of ex- 
treme antiquity in the East : indeed, the symbolizing 
his ideas would appear to be an invention which 
unassisted man could never have arrived at; and we 

D 



50 HOMEE. 

have some grounds, from Genesis, eh. ii. vv. 19, 20, to 
believe that signs of thought were a matter of revela- 
tion to the first man. 

The writer has ventured to subjoin a very close 
ti'anslation, in English hexameters, of the episode 
concerning the dog of Ulysses, in Od. lib. xvii. line 
290, &c. The story is full of nature, and will give 
the reader, who is unacquainted with Greek, a truer 
idea of Homer's mind than many passages better 
known. The metre being the same as in the origi- | 
nal, and the version almost word for word, will, it is 
hoped, give the subject additional interest. 

****** 

Thus to each other spake they ; but the hound, as he lay in 

his weakness, 
Pricked up his ears and his head, — poor Argus of patient 

Ulysses ; 
Him had his master rear'd, hut not sported with ; parting 

beforehand 
To the devoted Troy : so, formerly did the young gallants 
Hunt him to chase the wild goats, and the timorous hare, 

and the roebuck. 
But, — he had long been cast out, grown old, and his lord being 

absent, 
Lying on heaps of filth, dropped there by the mules and the 

oxen 
Outside his master's door, — from which to the farm of 

Ulysses 
Servants would clear it away for manure, while cruelly 

leaving jj 

Argus, the fine old dog, full of sores and covered with ver- | 

min. 



HOMER. 51 

Still, when now, the poor creature beheld Ulysses approach- 
ing. 

He lay back his ears, and fawn'd with his tail in faithful 
affection, 

But rose not, nor nearer could get to his own dear master 

All for neglect and age : — and the king, unobserved by the 
swineherd. 

Brushing away his tears at the sight, immediate address'd 
him. 

Surely Eumseus, 'tis strange, this dog lies here on the dung- 
heap. 

He seems to be fine in his form and his breed, yet one thing 
I know not 

If he be fleet, — for starving he lies, a shame to his masters, — 

Or if he be a slow hound, such as man often makes his com- 
panion 

And for his own delight for awhile is accustomed to pamper. 

Him then answered straight, — even thou, Eumseus the swine- 
herd : 
Truly, I heed not : the dog is a man's who has died on his 

travels. 
Were he the same but now, in shape, and power, and courage. 
As when Ulysses, starting for Ilium, left him behind him, 
Quickly, I wot, would you wonder, to see his muscle and 

fleetness : 
For not a beast could escape him, which he but once got a 

sight of. 
All the dark forest through ; the hound had the cunning to 

track them. 
Now, misfortune in turn catches him ; for the king his old 

master 
Perish'd away from home; and the careless damsels forget 

him. 
For that, servants, whenever a master ceases to govern, 

D 2 



52 HOMER. 

Will not afterwards heed to perform the task of their duty ; 
And because farseeing Jupiter steals away half a man's 

virtue 
Soon as the baneful morn of servitude darkens upon him. 

So saying he went in to the fair and populous mansion, 
Straight going up to the hall to seek the illustrious wooers. 
But, for poor Argus, — the fate of black death had iitterly 

seiz'd him, 
AVhen, in his twentieth year, he saw for a moment Ulysses. 



53 



Hear him, sore-travailling mother, patient earth, 
Hear the glad eloquence of this thy son ; 
The times of want and woe are well nigh done, 
And old creation springs to second birth, 
Toil's rest, care's cure, and melancholy's mirth : 

O golden sabbath of the world, speed on ; 
Why tarrieth nature's king? — the woods, the waves. 
The waiting righteous in their prison-graves. 
The moan of famine, and the shriek of fear, 
Entreat thy coming, O desire of all, 

Theme of Isaiah's hope, in praise appear ! 
Great monarch, take thy universal crown. 
Even so, quickly : shall thy people call 
In vain ? O rend the heavens, and come down ! 



54 ISAIAH. 



Holy Scripture is full of promises to material cre- 
ation. The earth has not yet held jubilee. The Jewish 
nation has not yet reaped the harvest of its hopes, 
and the glories of Solomon cannot fairly be consi- 
dered as a fulfilment even of antecedent promises : 
while all those which succeed clearly point to that 
golden age of the Jewish monarchy, as having been 
merely typical. The light that lighteneth the Gen- 
tiles, hath yet to be the glory of his people Israel. If 
a son of Abraham should, through grace, and from 
conviction, close with Christianity, still he ought 
never to give up his national expectations, nor his 
nation. Paul confessed himself a Jew ; Jesus was 
a Jew ; and although the name has, for the fulfil- 
ment of prophecy, fallen into contempt, " a hissing 
and a reproach," it shall yet, in similar fulfilment, be 
a synonyme for all that is good, great, and glorious 
on the renovated earth. " Ten men shall lay hold 
on the mantle of one man that is a Jew, and shall 
say, we will go with thee, for we have heard that 
God is with thee." 

The seven concluding chapters of Isaiah, as indeed 
one half of the Bible directly or indirectly, may 
be referred to as elucidatory of millenial expect- 
ations. 



ISAIAH. 00 

In some remarks hereafter made upon St. John 
and St. Paul, the opportunity has been taken, (it 
is hoped in unfeigned humility, and with a real desire 
of doing good,) to comment upon the propriety of 
revising, by an authorized list of comgenda, a few- 
passages in our translation of the Scriptures. The 
subject of Isaiah offers another favourable occasion 
for alluding to this important topic ; and although the 
v^Titer would confess at once that he has not the bib- 
lical learning requisite to do it anything like justice, 
still he wishes, by the publication of these hints, to 
induce others, more able, to follow up the matter. 

As examples of errors, which are familiar to many, 
let the following be taken: Is. ix. 3, where " Thou 
hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy ; 
they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest," 
&c. should be rendered, " Thou hast multiplied the 
nation, and increased its joy," &c. the Hebrew word 
" lo," spelt with an aleph or a vau, having both con- 
tradictory meanings. So again in Is. xxxiii. 2, 
" O Lord, be gracious unto us ; we have waited for 
thee : be thou their arm every morning, our salvation 
also in the time of trouble," it is manifest that " their" 
is an error for " our," the latter reading being not 
merely supported by the sense of the context, but by 
the best authorities. Again, Is. liii. 8, " from prison 
and from judgment," which was not literally verified, 
should be more accurately, " by distress and judg- 
ment," as in the margin ; (indeed the marginal read- 
ing is often the more preferable :) also, in the same 



56 ISAIAH. 

chapter, ver. 9, where the better version is, " His 
death was appointed with the wicked, and with the 
rich man was his tomb :" an exact prophecy which 
our common translation confounds. Many other in- 
stances of such faults might be given. 

The next class is of incorrect punctuation, which 
frequently quite destroys the sense : turn to Zech. 
ix. 1, where we find, " The burden of the word of the 
Lord in the land of Hadrach, and Damascus shall be 
the rest thereof: when the eyes of men, as of all the 
tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord :" the true 
reading is submitted to be, " The burden of the word 
of the Lord in the land of Hadrach andDamascus : the 
rest thereof shall be, when," &c. Once more; Joel, ii. 
14, should probably be rendered thus, " Who know- 
eth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing 
behind him ? A meat offering, a drink offering, unto 
the Lord our God ! blow the trumpet in Zion, — sanctify 
a fast," &c., where by understanding the word " bring" 
before " a meat offering," &c., obscurity is avoided, 
and the passage stands out in all its eloquence. 

A third class of corrigenda is one of less import- 
ance, but still its popular influence does great injury 
to the cause of religion : allusion is made to such need- 
lessly bald translations, as " a bottle in the smoke" 
for a wine-skin ; " why hop ye so, ye high hills," for 
" exult ye," in the Prayer-book psalms : " butter and 
honey shall he eat," for curd and honey; or still 
worse, that bathos in the sublime hymn of Deborah, 
Judges, V. " she brought forth butter in a lordly dish :" 



ISAIAH. 57 

also Is. xxxvii. 36, " when they arose early in the 
morning, behold they were all dead corpses," where 
the least care in the world, as the use of " former and 
latter," " these and those," or" Jews and Ass\Tians," 
would save the absurdity of the two theys ; it would 
only be to treat Scripture as fairly as another trans- 
lated book : also, such a case, as making the good 
Samaritan give " two pence," and the master of the 
vineyard " a penny a day;" for however it may by an 
antiquarian be remembered that the English silver 
penny had its ancestor in the Roman denarius, the 
common hearer goes away with false and mean im- 
pressions : lastly, under this head might appear se- 
veral sentences which in the lapse of time have be- 
come indelicate. 

But instances of possible amendments may be mul- 
tiplied to a great amount; some others are mentioned 
hereafter; and doubtless every sensible reader of the 
Bible has met with many. Still, while such an one 
has lamented the evil, he has perceived, with king 
Alfred, the danger of touching what is good, though 
to make it better, and of tampering with our present 
version, even to improve it : a sentiment with which the 
writer partially sympathizes. Nevertheless, it should 
be recollected that the present translation of James 
the First has several times been revised already, as, 
in 1683, 1711, and even so lately as 1769; also that 
a living language is very variable, and cannot long 
be accounted standard ; and, conclusively, that some- 
thing still remains to be done, and that for the honour 



58 ISAIAH. 

of religion and the furtherance of truth all stumbling- 
blocks which can be cleared away, should be cleared 
away, in spite of danger : '' these little things are great 
to little men," and with all our intellectual progres- 
sion, we do not yet perceive that " mind, the stand- 
ard of the man," has grown to be a giant. 

Without controversy, the greatest care should be 
taken that so responsible a task fall only to the lot of 
orthodox, pious, and learned persons; that as little 
alteration be made as possible; and, in fact, as is 
again suggested hereafter, that the revision should be 
presented to the public in the shape of a list of au- 
thorized en-ata and corrigenda, (perhaps under various 
heads, as, necessary, expedient, philological, and 
merely elegant,) which might be issued in pamphlets 
of different sizes, and bound up with our present 
Bibles, at the discretion of individuals. The danger 
to be apprehended from conflicting statements, and 
heterodox versions, might be, and ought to be ren- 
dered null and void by the power of parliament : a 
Christian and a Protestant nation, (if indeed we may 
now be called so,) has no higher duty nor greater 
privilege than to keep the Scriptures of truth as pure 
and perfect as human frailty will permit. One word 
more : no man of any taste or feeling would think of 
modernizing the version. 

Perhaps it may be considered objectionable, that a 
topic of such weight should be thus slightly touched 
in a few discursive remarks, and in a volume of such 
mixed materials : but the writer has elsewhere al- 



ISAIAH. 59 

luded to the difficulties he labours under in the way 
of condensation, and is really anxious, as far as in his 
power lies, to stimulate some less feeble hand to the 
useful and honourable task of a critical emendation. 
Finally, if in these days of general reform, he be ac- 
counted to have erred in mooting the subject at all, 
or be wrong in any of his instances, (for the argu- 
ment remains the same, should there exist but one 
error,) he is bold to deprecate in this matter personal 
reproof, and offers his motive to shield his indiscre- 
tion. Magna est Veritas, et praevalebit : there is gieat 
weakness in concealing faults: our strength lies in 
amending them. A fit and unsuperstitious faith in 
the authorized version, which is generally most ac- 
curate, would be strengthened, rather than shaken, 
by so wholesome a measure ; and if we had such a 
translation of the Sacred Scriptures, as would do jus- 
tice to its original, many of the strong holds of mo- 
dem infidelity would totter to their foundations, and 
in nine cases out of ten the scoff of the blasphemer 
would be silenced. 



60 



To know thyself, — a knowledge beyond price, 
\Vliich some of this world's wisest cannot learn, 
To search the heart, and keenly there discern 

Even among its flowers of Paradise 

The watchful subtle snake of cherished vice 
And thus aware, to fly it,^nor to fan 
Those guilty sparks that else shall scorch and burn 
Thine innocence, — this is thy wisdom, Man : 

This, had no messenger of grace aloud 
Proclaimed it for thy weal, of yonder sage 

Separate in glory from that white-robed crowd. 
Thou long hadst learnt : Solon, from age to age 

One short full phrase a noble proof supplies 

That thou wert wise as good, and good as wise. 



SOLON. 61 



It must be confessed that the accurate biographer, 
Plutarch, makes no mention of the great moral mle, 
by which the superiority of Solon is popularly tested 
among us. TvHjOi (jeavrov is known by every school- 
boy to be the saying attributed to this chief of the 
seven wise men of Greece, and we may safely de- 
clare that upon this traditionary phrase rests the ge- 
neral appreciation of Solon's character. Self-know- 
ledge lies at the very foundation of moral philosophy, 
and if Christian ethics spring from that better know- 
ledge of a God, holy, just, merciful and true, still, by 
reflection and contrast we arrive at the useful, because 
humbling conviction of our comparative worthlessness. 
It is indeed a great argument of true wisdom in a 
heathen, to find him choosing as his motto, " Know 
thyself:" with what light and power it shines forth 
from the sayings of those rival six ! Bias makes the 
easy discovery, that " most men are wicked ;" the 
worldly Pi ttacus bids, "watch your opportunity;" pru- 
dent Thales forewarns of " the dangers of suretyship ;" 
Cleobulus casts a dead weight upon rising talent and 
virtue, by professing that " moderation is best ;" Pe- 
riander glories in a physical fact, that " to industry 
all things are possible;" and plagiarist Chilo only 
echoes the well-authenticated sentiment of Solon 



6-> SOLON. 

himself, when, praising Tellus the Athenian, and 
teaching vain-glorious Croesus the instability of 
greatness and wealth, he bids the Lydian son of 
Alyattes " to look to the end of life." Truly, the two 
words of Solon outweigh all the rest for practical 
wisdom, and many a volume could not exhaust the 
fullness of yvw^t creavTov. 

Solon was a descendant of the celebrated Cadmus, 
the last king of Athens, and flourished in the seventh 
and sixth centuries before Christ: the popular ac- 
counts of him are accessible, if not familiar, to all; but 
it may not be so well known that even to us, the " ex- 
tremis orbe Britannis," the wisdom of the sovereign 
legislator and archon of Athens has furnished laws : 
his original " kyrbes," (as the triangular tablets were 
called on which his code was written,) survived to 
the time when the twelve Roman tables were com- 
posed, and were incorporated into them ; these again 
formed the ground-work of the laws of Justinian, 
many canons of which are in force in our own civil 
and ecclesiastical courts. 

" The law commonly called the civil law, had its 
birth in Rome; and was first written by the Decemviri, 
three hundred and three years after the foundation of 
the city. It was compounded as well out of the 
Athenian and other Grecian laws, as out of the 
ancient Roman customs and laws regal." So far Sir 
Walter Raleigh, lib. ii. c. 4: we learn from other 
places, that the kyrbes of Solon were the staple and 
substance of the twelve tables of Rome. 



SOLON. 63 

Solon is known to history as a poet as well as a 
lawgiver ; indeed it is said that his laws were written 
in verse, in order that the Athenians might more 
readily remember them : a striking contrast to our 
own verbose and unintelligible enactments, where 
words appear to be multiplied for the sole purpose 
of " darkening knowledge." There is a story told 
of him, which will afford an opportunity of pre- 
senting the reader with a fragment of his elegiac 
poetry. The Athenians having decreed that any 
one who should propose the recovery of Salamis 
from the Megarensians should be put to death, 
Solon, considering the decree dishonourable, had the 
patriotism to disobey it, and at the same time had 
the prudence to evade the law by feigning madness: 
accordingly he composed an elegy, and rushing into 
the agora in the dress worn by the insane, de- 
claimed in a seeming inspiration against the mea- 
sure : the poem began as follows, 

Never was this fair city by Providence doom'd to be niin'd, 
Nor have the blest living gods deeply deterrain'd its end ; 

For a magnanimous warden, and born of a powerful father, 
Pallas, Athenian queen, stretches above us a shield : 

But by their own vile deeds to destroy that glorious city. 
Such is her children's will, bribed by her enemies' gold. 

K. T. X. 

There may not be sufficient interest to warrant fur- 
ther rendering : let it be enough to know that the at- 
tempt of Solon succeeded in raising to higher senti- 
ments the variable populace. 



64 



A GARDEN of ungathered parable 

Lies ripe around us, in fair-figured speech 
Blooming, like Persian love-letters, to teach 

Dull -hearted man where hidden pleasures dwell : 

Its fruits, its flowers, of love and beauty tell. 

And, as quick conscience wings the thought, to 

each 
Doth all our green sweet world sublimely preach 

Of wisdom, truth, and might, unutterable : 

For thee, poor Phrygian slave, mind's free-born son. 

In whose keen humour nought of malice lurk'd 
While good was forced at wit's sarcastic fire, 

The world should pay thee thanks, for having work'd 
That garden first, and weU the work is done, 
A labourer full worthy of his hire. 



iESOP. 65 



Of JEsop's life we have little certain information. 
One Planudes, indeed, gives us a number of apocry- 
phal anecdotes, all bearing upon his wit and ugliness, 
and in general derogatory to the philosophical gran- 
deur of a certain Xanthus, otherwise Idmon, who 
appears to have been the but of his too satirical slave. 
The time at which ^Esop lived is generally stated to 
be about 600 A. C. ; and tradition tells of him that 
he originally came from Phrygia, was sold in Athens 
as a slave, actually at so low a sum as three copper 
oboli, through his clever defence of Samos obtained 
his manumission, became known to Solon, and through 
him, shared the bounty of Croesus. His death is 
reported to hav e been owing to the exasperation of 
the people of Delphi, whose enmity he had excited 
by hindering the tide of gold from flowing into their 
coffers, and ridiculing their priestcraft in a fable : it 
is said that they managed to accuse him of sacrilege, 
by concealing a cup of gold among his baggage, as 
in Benjamin's case, and then hurried the condemned 
innocent man to the dreadful death of their Parnas- 
sian precipice. 

St. Jerome instances JEsop as one of the most 
unfortunate of men ; for his birth, state, and death 
were alike miserable ; in that he was born deformed. 



68 Msop. 

lived a slave,, and died the death of a criminal. Yet 
did the holy father judge of him too much with the 
mind of a pagan Solon; for though deformed in 
body, he was a proper man in intellect, though a 
slave in condition, a freeman in soul, though visited 
by death in his worst shape, yet visited innocently. 
Verily, there are many fair, many free, many quietly 
dying who might find much to envy in foul, fettered, 
persecuted ^sop. 

Even the accounts of his extreme deformity, as 
we have them, are very questionable : but there is 
some little antecedent probability of it; for dwarfs 
and hunchbacks have almost universally been famous 
for a cunning spirit, whether shown in the form of 
illnatured and acrimonious sarcasms, or manifested 
by " quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles." Of this 
established fact in human nature, many writers of 
fiction have availed themselves, and no novel reader 
can be at a loss for examples. The name ^Esopus is 
said to be synonimous with .^thiops, in allusion to 
his black complexion ; but it seems nearer allied to 
Asopus, a river in Asia : the great fabulist of anti- 
quity is reported also to have been visited with the 
like affliction under which Moses, Paul, and other 
great men of oldhave laboured, impediment of speech ; 
but if we reflect how often his extemporaneous elo- 
quence served him in good stead, we shall see rea- 
son to reject the tradition. 

Is it necessary to explain the allusion to a " Per- 
sian love-letter ? " the phrase is, perhaps, scarcely a 



JESOP. 67 

correct one, but it may serve to convey the poetical 
idea of the children of the East, to whom every 
bunch of flowers tells its imaginative tale. 

In reference to the priority of iEsop in fable, it should 
be stated, that, strictly, the first fable on record is 
that mentioned in the book of Judges, where Jotham 
admonishes the populace in the parable of the bram- 
ble, king of trees: this took place A. C. 1236. He- 
siod also has been called the father of fable : but 
if we look into extreme antiquity, we shall find 
that the true originators of the fabulous were the in- 
ventors of hieroglyphics, and that to wonderful 
Egypt we must turn for the idea of symbolizing 
man and his passions by the brute creation. It is a 
curious coincidence in connexion with this idea, that 
when the Delphians were plagued for the murder of 
^Esop, the oracle commanded them to raise to him a 
commemorative pyramid. 

It is difiicult to say which of the fables that pass 
under JEsop's name can be truly ascribed to him : 
the common collections are by various authors, mostly 
by Phaedrus, who lived in the Augustan age : however, 
as the two following pieces are among the less 
known, and very short, and even for that cause more 
likely to be ^sop's, the author has rendered them 
as below. It would be uncandid in any person to 
cavil about a lighter piece being introduced in its 
proper place, merely because matters of sacred im- 
port are discussed in their proper places : such an 
objector should apply to himself that immortal sen- 



68 ^sop. 

tence, which might have been Terence's epitaph, 
" Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto." 

A very wise man built himself 

A very little house : 
His neighbour, puff'd with pride of pelf. 
Cries out, How now, my sordid elf, 
'Twill barely hold your learned self 

Together with — a mouse : 

The very wise man made reply ; 

It suits my private ends, — 
It's big enough for me ; and I 
Will do my utmost, by and by, 
To show my hospitality. 

And fill it with — true friends. 

Of course, the writer is aware that Phsedrus has 
called the wise man above, Socrates, who coming 
much after JEsop, could not have been named in one 
of his fables : but this is interpolated by the Thra- 
cian freedman, part of whose work is, in fact, a loose 
paraphrase of ^sop. The following is very likely 
to have been spoken to the Athenians, by the hunch- 
back himself. 

Ages ago, beneath their care to be. 

The blessed gods chose each his special tree. 

Jove took the oak, and Cybele the fir. 

As for fair Venus, myrtle best pleased her. 



) 



JESOV, 69 

Hercules chose the poplar, Phoebus bay, — 
Minerva, wondering, then began to say, 
" Why take the barren trees ? you judge amiss ;" 
Jove answered her, " Our reason's mainly this. 
We would not have our honours bought and sold:" 
Quoth she, again, ** By Styx, when all is told, 
I love not glories, useless branch and root. 
Give me the olive, with both leaves and fruit." 

We may well imagine such a fable would gratify, 
much and harmlessly, the vain-glorious people of 
Athens. 



70 



^ a i p ^ ©. 

The poisonous tooth of time, O shepherdess, 

Hath killed thy thousand vines ; a few scarr'd 

shoots 
Alone are green above the withered roots, 

And thence we cherish an admiring guess 

Of what the rich ripe vintage should have been : 
Poor muse, they do thee wrong ; they have not 
seen 

Those records lost of truth and tenderness. 

They have not read thy heart, — ^but harm thee still 

Where, as unknown, their charity should bless, 
Tainting thy memory with whispered ill : 

Yet are those snatches of thy musical songs 
Full of warm nature, and impassioned truth. 
Love, beauty, sweetness, and eternal youth : 

Sappho, — we praise thee rather for thy wrongs. 



SAPPHO. 71 



Virgil in Georgic ii. 379, speaking of the cultiva- 
tion of the vine, complains how much — 

" Nocuere greges, durique venenum 
Dentis, et admorso signata in stirpe cicatrix :'' 

and it is well known that fig-trees and vines seldom 
recover from the gnawing of a goat. The application 
is obvious to " tempus edax rerum," which, in truth, 
of all fair Sappho's nine books of songs, hymns, ele- 
gies, and epigrams, has grudgingly and barely spared 
us two imperfect odes, and a few scattered fragmentary 
lines. Under these circumstances, and especially as 
the little we have left is full of the most touching 
sentiment, and sweet expression, it is contended that 
the world has been very uncharitable to the moral 
memory of this poetess. Her love, deep as the 
shades and strong as death, was not necessarily cri- 
minal; those ministering handmaids, w^ho tended the 
steps of " the tenth muse," were in all likelihood no 
worse, nor other, than innocent admiring pupils, who 
strove to follow in the steps of her poetic fame. But, 
truth to tell, man, as lord of the creation, is ever jea- 
lous of female superiority ; and doubtless, this is an 
adequate reason for the fact, that almost no woman 
of learning or eminence has come down to our hear- 
ing with an unblemished reputation; without a di- 



72 SAPPHO. 

rect avowal to vindicate every individual, take, as 
examples, Semiramis, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and even 
Sheba's queen, Tyrian Elissa, sumamed Dido, or the 
great, and the learned Platonist Hypatia : poor Sap- 
pho has suffered more than others, because her 
crime has been to have excelled in what men ac- 
count especially their high prerogative, literary com- 
position ; and it would not be difficult to mention 
many female names in modern times, (for one. Lady 
M. W. Montague,) that have been aspersed in like 
manner, and for a like reason : it would be improper 
to allude strikingly to more recent instances, but 
they will readily occur to the sagacious reader : envy 
has made sad havock with the character of many an 
authoress. We have but few knights-errant who will 
throw down the gauntlet on behalf of the fairer can- 
didates for literary fame ; our chivalry seldom goes the 
length of assisting the sex that should obey, in the 
acquisition of mental excellence, which is in fact the 
art of ruling : we want some Arcadian Sydney, who 
will joust for the fair oppressed with his pen : such 
an one was the gallant Sir Walter Raleigh, as we 
have seen in the case of Semiramis. Lesbian Sap- 
pho, the thesis of this episode, flourished about 600 
A. C. Many have thought, without much reason, that 
there have existed two celebrated women of the 
name ; there was probably but one, and that one is 
said to have flung herself into the sea from a moun- 
tain in the island of Leucadia, a victim to disappointed 
love for Phaon, the handsome sailor of Mitylene. 
It is a strange fact, and exemplifies well the debt 



SAPPHO. 73 

we owe to the printing-press, to know that so lately as 
the time of Augustus, the works of Sappho were ex- 
tant complete : as it is, whether from the conflagra- 
tion at Alexandria, or otherwise, we have literally 
nothing left, but what the admiring ancients have 
incidentally quoted in their writings. Dionysius of 
Halicamassus has preserved to us the following 
" Hymn to Venus," which has been attempted lite- 
rally, in the sapphic metre. 

Throned on the rainbow, goddess Aphrodite, 
Daughter of Zeus, wile-weaver, I beseech thee, 
Neither with fears nor sorrows, O thou dread one. 

Thrall my poor bosom ; 

But hither speed, as oft in other seasons 
Heeding with grace my suppliant invocation 
Thou wert propitious, coming from the golden 

Dome of the Father, 

In thy light chariot hamess'd by the sparrows 
Which o'er the dark earth skimmingly did bear thee, 
Quivering thence with rapid wing to heaven 

Thro' the mid aether : 

Swiftly they came ; and thou, the everblessed, 
Smiling with godlike countenance serenely, 
Askedst me what I suffer'd then, and wherefore 

Now I invoke thee ; 

£ 



74 SAPPHO. 

And chiefly this, what most of all I long for 
In my hot mind, — and whom I would entangle 
In the strong meshes of my love ;— O Sappho, 

Who is it slights thee ? 

For if he flees her, — swiftly will she follow ; 
If he receive not gifts, — yet will she give them ; 
If he love not, — yet quickly will she kiss him, 

Yea, tho' unwilling. 

Come to me then, and save me from my sorrows 
Hard to be borne, and what my soul desires 
Done — see thou done, O goddess, — and my champion 

Be thou for ever. 

The classical reader will not require to be told, 
that it is little to the advantage of Sappho, to ren- 
der the burning thoughts of that inspired poetess 
into a language so little majestic as our own, and 
that too, totidem verbis. Those who have the origi- 
nals at hand, and are competent to the task, will no 
doubt institute comparisons : let them bear in mind 
that the learned Gerard Vossius of Dort has pro- 
nounced the sweetness of Sappho unapproachable ; 
that of some words there are various readings ; and 
that the genius of the English tongue is little adapted 
to the rigid rules of scanning : a derivative language 
must be dead, stiff" and cold, before it can attain to 
the certainty of metre ; instance among the ancients 
Homer and Ennius, and with us, the seeming laxity 



SAPPHO. 75 

of Chaucer : yet were these exact versifyers accord- 
ing to the rules of their own day. The following 
fragment of a love-song requires even more apology, 
as it has been cited by Longinus in exemplification 
of the beautiful sublime : the monstrous slander con- 
nected with it needs no repetition ; it is quite suf- 
ficient to conceive that the poetess was speaking in 
the person of an imaginary pair, without accusing 
her of misplaced affections. 

Equal to gods in beatific rapture 

Seems the too favour'd lover, who beside thee 

Fondly reclines, and whispering thee softly 

Waits the sweet answer, 

Sunnily smiling then : — ah me ! that bright look 
Pierces my heart, weak flutterer in my bosom. 
Soon as I see thy fairness, am I stricken 

Silent and breathless ; 

Then flow my words with utterance incoherent, 
Over my skin the thrilling fire rushes, 
Dimm'd are mine eyes, my ringing ears are deafen'd 

With hollow boomings. 

Then am I bathed in chilly dews, — a trembling 
Seizes me, — paler am I than the flower 
Faint with the sun, — weak, motionless, and helpless, 

Languidly dying, — 

Yet must I dare to tell my love 

E-2 



76 SAPPHO. 

And this is all that has come down to us of an 
ode full of unutterable feeling. It is currently re- 
ported that by these stanzas the physician of An- 
tiochus Soter tested the love of the latter for Stra- 
tonice : but surely nature was a poetic teacher nearer 
at hand than even her sweet handmaid Sappho : 
such symptoms are not to be learnt from books. It 
might be more courtly to profess obligation to a 
fashionable ode, than to the humbler skill of perceiv- 
ing the weakness of humanity. 



77 



Rare Egypt, not thine own sweet- watered Nile, 
Thy Memphis, nor those seated giants twain, 
Not golden Thebes, nor Luxor's stately fane, 

Nor Pyramids eteme of mountain pile, 

Exhaust thy glories gone : thy grander boast 
Was learning, and her sons, — who thronged of old 
To draw fair knowledge from thy generous coast, 

Nor drew in vain, but drank the blessed draught ; 

And deepest hath this noble Samian quaff'd 
Who walketh with me now in white and gold ; 

Wear thou indeed that crown, mysterious sage, 
Whose soaring fancy, with deep diving thought, 

Hath pour'd mind-riches over every age, 

And charmM a world Pythagoras hath taught. 



78 PYTHAGORAS. 



The learning of the Egyptians has almost fallen 
into a proverb. It has become trite to allude to 
Moses, or to bring forward authorities on a point so 
little disputed. An hour's attention well directed in 
the British Museum will convey to the reader a far 
more amusing and instructive proof of the wonderful 
state of early Egyptian art, than could be ai'rived at 
by a whole library of dry treatises, deprived of the 
potent teaching of the eye. From whatever quarter 
the Egyptians derived their extraordinary knowledge, 
and so precocious withal, it is certain that nearly all 
other nations have been nurtured at the breasts of 
their wisdom. Israel, Greece, Etruria, Edom, Susa, 
nay not impossibly Mexico, and oui* own Cyclopian 
Druids, derived knowledge and arts of all kinds from 
Egypt, that country which now, in fulfilment of pro- 
phecy, has so strangely become the vilest of king- 
doms. That all the great peculiarities in the teach- 
ing of Pythagoras had their root at least in the 
twenty-two years of instruction which he passed in the 
Theban temples is demonstrable, if not at once ad- 
mitted : the theories of astronomy, and cosmogony, 
of transmigration, of mystic signs, — and therefore 
the philosopher's favourite notion of numbers sym- 
bolizing aU things algebraically, — nay, of the musical 



PYTHAGORAS. 79 

scale so confidently given to him, (for surely the 
harpers on the wall of the royal tomb at Thebes were 
there anterior to the sojourn of Pythagoras in Egypt,) 
— all the above, and more, were to be learnt of the 
priests at Memphis and Thebes, as we now know 
from their hieroglyphical chambers. Nevertheless, 
after so great a deduction, there can be very little 
doubt that Pythagoras was one of the wisest unin- 
spired men that ever lived ; " vir praestanti sapientia," 
as Cicero calls him : the influence he held over the 
world was unbounded, and has not yet ceased ; he is 
still in many respects " the philosopher," and his 
avTog 'i<pa is often still despotic from its truth. 

The subject of Pythagoras offers a most inviting 
opportunity for many discussions on speculative 
points ; a whole harvest of thought starts up in the 
furrows of the mind, ripe for the sickle ; but we have 
in this place little room to gamer them. Otherwise, 
we might at length pursue the interesting enquiry 
how far the illustrious Samian may have been in- 
debted for some of his religious theories to a pos- 
sible interview with captive Jews at Babylon : a 
question analogous to the connection of Isaiah, the 
Sibylline books, and the fourth Eclogue of Virgil. 
We might enter into the recondite philosophy of his 
doctrine of numbers : the general depth and truth 
of his metaphysical theories : the exact correspon- 
dence observed by Clement to exist between the 
ecclesiastic orders of the Hebrews, and the different 
ranks of the Pythagorean proselytes: the human 



80 PYTHAGORAS. 

causes of his wonderful success in reforming luxu- 
rious Crotona : the wisdom of appropriating the 
white robe, the crown of gold, a mysterious secresy, 
and the assumption of semi-divinity. We might re- 
buke the morality, while admiring the sagacity, of 
the falsehood he practised on the world, by immuring 
himself in a cave for many days, until pallid and 
emaciated, the glorious impostor returned as with 
messages from Hades. We might narrate the extra- 
ordinary coincidence perceptible between the musi- 
cal genius of Handel and Pythagoras, in the inven- 
tion of the monochord from the same cause which 
has bequeathed to us the " Harmonious Black- 
smith." Lastly, we might descant at the length 
which the atrocity deserv^ed, on the shameful fact 
that the envy of a malicious populace, headed by 
Cylon and other demagogues, starved this great phi- 
losopher to death in the temple of the Muses, solely 
because he numbered men of rank and property 
among his disciples. 

Of all the above thus briefly : a few more facts of 
moment, and little known, deserve to be repeated. 
Several lives of Pythagoras were written; as by 
Diogenes Laertius of Cilicia, by Syrian lamblichus, 
and by Melek, sumamed Porphyry. That of lam- 
blichus, although most dealing in the marv^ellous, has 
an extraordinary interest, when we know that it was 
wTitten by command of Julian the Apostate in order 
to rival the inspired histories of our Lord Christ : 
accordingly, it is full of miracles, lacking only the 



PYTHAGORAS. 81 

internal evidences of utility and fitness, and the ex- 
ternal evidence of attestation. Vain and besotted 
man, to institute comparisons between Christ rais- 
ing the dead, and Pythagoras appearing at Elis with 
a gilt thigh ; — between the wonders of merciful om- 
nipotence, and the puerile natural magic of reflect- 
ing letters of blood through a glass upon the moon ! 
Truly, great Pythagoras, thy fame is little indebted 
to so judicious a biographer : let us in conclusion turn 
to better things. The learned and witty Platonist, 
Hierocles of Alexandria, has devoted a volume to 
comment upon the traditional sayings of Pythagoras, 
many of which go far to illustrate this teacher's wis- 
dom. Let us first take from the Commentary, 
(p. 342, of ed. 1673,) the origin of the name. " Aris- 
tippus, quoted by Laertius, says of the word, Py- 
thagoras, that it was given to him because he 
preached truth as surely as Apollo ; quasi, TrvOiwg 
ayopivHv :" similarly, in the Christian Church, John 
of Antioch was named from his eloquence Chiysos- 
tom, or golden-mouthed. Next, concerning the 
much disputed point as to the authorship of the 
Pythagorean verses, which have been ascribed to 
Epicharmus of Cos, and others, let us hear the tes- 
timony of Jerome : " Whose then are these golden 
sayings ? are they not those of Pythagoras r in 
which briefly are contained all his dogmas." Pro- 
clus also, or Procles, and Clement of Alexandria are 
of the same opinion : contrary are Chrysippus, Plu- 
tarch, Galen, and others. However disputed the 

£ 5 



82 PYTHAGORAS. 

question of the authorship of the seventy- one golden 
verses may be, (called golden, be it remembered, not 
for the elegance of their composition or beauty of 
their flow, a popular notion which is quite erroneous, 
but for their purity of sentiment, and practical wis- 
dom,) all will agree that they convey the doctrines of 
Pythagoras honestly ; as for the symbols, and dis- 
jointed sayings, these all are believed to be tradition- 
ally authentic. 

The reader will not be displeased to have a speci- 
men of Pythagorean morals as contained in these 
golden verses, in their own metre : to transcribe the 
whole might be accounted more tedious than their 
curiosity would warrant. 

First, honour thou the immortal gods, as a law of thy being : 
Next, religiously keep thine oath, and reverence heroes : 
Pay thou then the respect that is due to the dead, and their 

demons : 
Then honour those who begat thee, and let thy nearest be 

dearest : 
After all these get a friend, whoever is foremost in virtue : 
Yield to the modest excuse, and bow to the deeds of the useful : 
Hate not a friend, and cast him not off, for trivial offences : 
Do thy best; for fate dwells near to the line of thy power : 
See thou observe the above. Strive also to compass as follow : 
Conquer thy hunger, thy sloth, and thy lust; be master of anger: 
Do no deed of disgrace, whether others witness thine actions, 
Or thy conscience alone ; above all things honour thy con- 
science. 

In a similar strain of moral excellence, varied by 
sectarian peculiarity, runs the whole poem. One or 



PYTHAGORAS. 83 

two of the riddles or symbols of Pythagoras are pre- 
sented ; they are too curious and too seldom to be 
met with to need apologetic introduction. " Sacri- 
fice and worship with naked feet ;" an evident allu- 
sion to Moses at the burning bush, and emblematical 
of renouncing the merit of works. " Speak not of 
Pythagorean doctrines in the dark :" meaning, with- 
out the light of initiation. " Stir not the fire with 
a sword," — doubtless intended of angry contests, as 
" add not fuel to flame," with us. " Leap not over the 
yoke," applicable to the case of not resisting provi- 
dences. " Wear not a ring," whether because among 
the Egyptians it symbolized eternity, or was a mark 
of rank, and so of pride, among the ancients, (see 
.Tames, ii. 2,) does not appear. " Cut not a stick b}* 
the way," — but go on your journey prepared. " Give 
not your right hand to any one;" so Polonius, in 
Hamlet, 

— " do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade." 

" Eat not your heart," as the silent La Trappist, or 
lonely Stylite. " Abstain from beans," — perliaps, 
because unwholesome, as pork was forbidden to the 
Jews ; perhaps, meddle not with politics, because 
the bean was sometimes used for balloting : but more 
likely, from some hieroglyphical secret of Egypt now 
beyond our reach. The symbols extend to thirty- 
nine, and some have thought that Pythagoras de- 
rived them from the priestess of the sacred island 
Delos. 



84 



— For thou art worthy, Seric Socrates, 
Of the bright robe, and that fair coronet, 
Meed of true goodness, on thy forehead set, 

AVorthy to walk in equal bliss with these 
Thy peers, in Hades' dreamy valley met ; 

For thine were pure and patriot services 

High worth, and generous love of doing good, 

Gilding the darkness of a barbarous clime 
That paid thee wages of ingratitude. 
After the Balaam cunning of a foe 

Had drown'd thine efforts in adulterous crime 
For righteous weal exchanging sinful woe : 
Witness, ye spirits of the good and wise, 
None recks of greatness till the great man dies. 



CONFUCIUS. 85 



The substance of our motto, " We think scorn of 
goodness, while living familiarly with us, but praise 
and admire it when taken from us," a sentiment ex- 
pressed by a diviner teacher in the saying, " No 
man is a prophet in his own country, nor in his 
father's house," was strangely exemplified in Confu- 
cius. This great man, who would have been a light 
in morals, and a champion in accomplishments even 
among the philosophers of Greece, flourished in wis- 
dom among a people degraded by the grossest idola- 
tries, about the sixth century before Christ. He 
was a native of Loo, one of the provinces of 
China, and was of royal descent. In this quarter 
of the world so little is popularly known of him, that 
it would not be difficult to find men of acquirements 
seriously imagining that Confutsee was a fabulous 
hero ; but on consulting history it will be found that 
his character, for purity of life, genius, learning, sim- 
plicity, disinterested patriotism, and contempt of 
mere wealth, was one of the brightest ever produced 
by the heathen world. In addition to natural quali- 
fications, there are some singular parallels to be 
drawn between Confucius and Socrates. Both were 
remarkably reformers of morals, and teachers cf 
youth ; both were accused of atheism for rejecting 



86 CONFUCIUS. 

the absurdities of pagan worship, and substituting 
natural religion ; both made some advances even in 
anticipation of revealed truth ; both were in life cast 
off, and in death all but worshipped by their coun- 
tries ; and both may be regarded as martyrs, although 
the death of Confucius was only a violent one ethic- 
ally speaking, — for he died of grief that " he did no 
good, that his eflforts were in vain, and the travail of 
life useless:" to complete the picture, both died 
nearly at the same age. 

The reader will remember that Balaam recom- 
mended Balak (according to the New Testament 
commentary) to destroy the Israelites by alienating 
them from God by means of the Moabitish women : 
a fiendish counsel in which he was unwittingly fol- 
lowed by the king of a neighbouring province to that 
of Confucius, who undid all the reforms of the phi- 
lanthropist by inundating his native country with 
the most abandoned females: in the same way 
Capua was a Cannae to Hannibal; and indeed to 
Assyria under Sardanapalus, to the Greek states, the 
Koman empire, nay to the whole world in all ages, 
the same evils have ever operated for destruction, 
the same " Stetere causae, cur perirent Funditus, 
imprimeretque muris Hostile aratrum exercitus in- 
solens." 

It is remarkable, that although Confucius left but 
one immediate descendant, a grandson, his posterity 
through seventy generations have lived and multiplied 
even to this day. They are said to enjoy many ho- 



CONFUCIUS. 87 

nours and immunities as the kith and kin of a sage, 
who in his own day was a wandering exile, and a per- 
secuted preacher of righteousness: and Confucius 
himself is now an object of idolatry to his indebted 
countrymen. 

Dr. Morrison has furnished us with some curious 
particulars relative to this extraordinary man : as, 
that miracles and wonders happened at his birth; 
that he was bom with an inscription on his breast, 
signifying " universal lawgiver ;" that (like Saul, and 
Musoeus,) he grew to a gigantic size ; that he was a 
prophet, and was warned of his own dissolution by a 
dream ; and the like. It is well known that the 
stable rule of government, founded on the fifth com- 
mandment, as it has for ages existed in China, 
mainly originated with Confucius, whose sacred 
books on Education, Moderation, and Conversation 
turn chiefly on the principle of filial duty : a system 
alike in accordance with nature, reason, and religion, 
although in common with all others, liable to abuse. 

The sayings of Confucius, which have come 
down to us, confirm his fame : almost in so many 
words, he (as also indeed did Milesian Thales,) gave 
the golden rule of conduct, " Do as you woidd be 
done by ;" his sentiments on life, society, character, 
and virtue, were admirable: and that he thought 
well politically, take as an example the following 
sentence out of his Lungyieu, ch. xvii. § 15. " A 
mean man cannot serve his king : for when he is out 
of ofiice his only object is to obtain it, and when he 



88 CONFUCIUS. 

is in office, his only care is to keep it. In the un- 
principled dread of losing his place, he is ready to 
go all lengths." Confucius himself was an eminent 
example of disinterestedness : for, finding his efforts 
for his country's good thwarted by the profligate 
conduct of the king and court of Loo, he threw up 
his dignities and offices, and became a private but in- 
fluential teacher of morals in more temperate Siam : 
a conduct w^orthy of imitation, so as pique be not 
mistaken for proper self-respect, nor obstinate selfish- 
ness for uncompromising patriotism. 



89 



Ye harp-controlling hymns! triumphant praise, 

That heralded to his delighted home 
The blushing victor of departed days 

From Elis, or Nemaea, or the dome 
Of sacred Delphi, — spirit-stirring songs. 

Even now your echoes linger on mine ears, 
And to your Theban father still belongs 

That name, time-honoured twice a thousand years, 
King of the sounding lyre : nor alone 

For music be thy praise, but for a heart 
Strung with affections of deep -thrilling tone 

And patriot feelings that in lightning dart 
Through the mute souls of all, with charmed sus- 
pense, 
Listening in love thy honied eloquence 



90 PINDAR. 



The ava^i (pop/uLiyyeg v/jlvol of Pindar are odes in 
honour of the successful candidates in the Olympic 
games ; chiefly remarkable for a boldness of flight 
which has perhaps never since been surpassed ; and 
varied with many episodes of patriotic warmth, 
divine zeal, and human sympathy. The stream of 
time, — and it is now twenty-three centuries since the 
bard of Thebes was in his prime, — has spared to us 
comparatively few specimens of his exalted genius ; 
but long before the day of Horace as long after our 
own, it is true of Pindar, that he was, is, and will be, 
' Laurea donandus Apollinari.' 

The epithet ' honied' is an allusion to the anec- 
dote told of him that the wild bees dropped their 
honey on his lips as he lay a sleeping child. 

At the risk of some censure, the writer has sub- 
joined in unadorned English a specimen of Pindar: 
he has endeavoured to render it almost literally, in 
opposition to the usual style of loaded ornament, and 
with the original metre and accent as much as pos- 
sible preserved ; a task of considerable difficulty, and 
for which due allowance should be made. One 
great stumbling block in the way, is caused by the 
very diverse feelings with which moderns now regard 
such physical contests as were displayed at the 



PINDAR. 91 

Olympic games : our imaginations immediately picture 
to us boxers and horse-jockeys, and are saturated with 
mean, if not ridiculous notions : whereas the ancients 
viewed the successful candidate in those solemn 
games as a hero, a conqueror, a man of high, though 
sudden, political importance, nay as a religious com- 
petitor favoured by heaven ; he was a chief of men, 
nraised by the old, and worshipped by the young ; 
he was carried in a triumphant procession to his 
native town, which thereby acquired new dignity, 
and instead of entering by the gate, he was carried 
in by a breach in the city wall, to signify that while 
such a hero was within the place, there was no need 
of ramparts. 

TO MELISSUS OF THEBES, A VICTOR IN THE 
CHARIOT-RACE. 



STROPHE. 

If the man, whom fortune blesses 

Either in all-glorious prizes 

Or in power of wealth, refrain 

His soul from chilling insolence. 

Worthy is he to be greeted with his fellows' praise : 

Mightier excellence flows from thee, Zeus, to mortals; 

And their weal, it grows for ever, 

Who follow thee with their hearts ; but the joys 

Of the fro ward in their budding 

Wither always fast away. 



92 PINDAR. 



ANTISTROPHE. 

Bring rewards for great achievements : 

Come now let us hymn the noble, 

Come, his triumph let us speed 

With lovely canzonets of joy : 

Doubly a conqueror fate hath wilFd Melissus, 

Filling with honied delight our hearts within us ; 

He was crown'd on plains of Isthmus ; 

And in the echoing grove of Nemaea 

Where the throttling lion moaned, 

His fair prowess honoured Thebes. 

EPODE. 

Victorious charioteer ! 
Ancestral renown 
Its offspring never disgraces. 
Of old ye know Cleonymus, 
His ancient fame in chariots : 
And thy mother-kin, the Labdacidae, 
Mighty heirs of treasure, toiled 
In the strife of the four-horse car. 
Time with his whirling periods 
Brings about various accidents : 
The children of heaven alone know not change nor 
harm. 

The above is the third Isthmian ode; and was se- 
lected, although less poetical than many others, as a 
brief epitome of the peculiarities of Pindar : his re- 



PINDAR. 93 

ligion; compare James, i. 17, " Every good gift 
and every perfect gift is from above," &c. : his moral- 
izing tone, compare Psalm i. 3, 4, where the same 
image is used concerning the just and the ungodly: 
his spirited variety in introducing the hero : his 
patriotic joy that Thebes has been honoured: his 
well-known foible of almost worshipping wealth and 
rank : and the wise hint to the exulting victor with 
which he concludes, reminding him that he is 
mortal. There is a curious parallelism here with that 
phrase in Shakspeare ; " and so the whirligig of time 
brings round his revenges." Of course, the reader 
who is learned in Greek metres, will be the best judge 
of the possibility of combining accuracy with a due 
degree of elegance. The idea of such possibility is 
a favourite one with the writer, and he has presently 
attempted a chorus of ^Eschylus under the same diffi- 
cult circumstances. 



94 



Severe in simple virtue, nobly poor, 
The guard alike and glory of all Greece 
Thro' fierce invading war, and factious peace, 

Model for youth, the temperate and pure, 
Exemplar for old age, the just and good, 
Athenian Aristides meekly stood, 

A thankless people's boast : thee — country's love 
Warm'd with its holiest flame ; thee — ^party spite 

From hearth and home to bitter exile drove 
Envied for goodness : still, the patriot fight 

Against the Mede beheld thee in the van 
Doubly a victor, at the selfsame hour 
Crushing the foreign despot's giant power. 

And conquering in thyself the pride of man. 



ARISTIDES. 95 



Republicanism has little to boast of, in the con- 
duct of ancient Athens towards her most illustrious 
children. No sooner did any one, by his talents, 
virtues, or the more accidental matter of prosperous 
industry, rise to influence, power, fame, or wealth, 
than he became immediately obnoxious to the popu- 
lar envy. To exemplify this position fully would 
ask merely a transcription of the names and fortunes 
of all Athenians, who, in spite of the deadening 
poison of democracy, were bravest, greatest, wisest, 
best ; Lucian in his Dialogue on Calumny fur- 
nishes us with a long list of these injured worthies : 
republican Rome is open to a similar accusation, 
and indeed the evil is a necessaiy consequence of 
government being in the hands of a bad majority. 
Scripture warns us against going with the multitude 
to do evil ; and history is full of proofs of the dan- 
ger of neglecting this warning : truth, virtue and ex- 
cellence are not to be predicated of the masses ; 
they are necessarily rarities ; the principle of re- 
presentation is only good in so far as it is a faithful 
abstract of the wisdom, religion, industry, and 
patriotism of a state : when it descends to indis- 
criminate polling, it can only be expected to bear 
witness to the vice, folly, and self-interest of man 
below the average. 



96 ARISTIDES. 

Aristides is not one of those, who have dropped 
into the grave " illacrymabiles, ignotique longa nocte, 
carent quia vate sacro;" for he has found a laud- 
atory historian in Plutarch, who gives several an- 
ecdotes in witness of his worth : e. g. that he 
was universally sumamed the Just ; that the whole 
theatre with one acclaim recognized the eulogy on 
Amphiaraus in ^sch. sept, contra Theb. as applica- 
ble to him ; that he had the magnanimity to give up 
his military command to Miltiades ; that when he 
went into exile, he prayed aloud for his ungrateful 
country ; that in the fall of Themistocles, his bitter- 
est personal and political enemy, he refused to join 
with Alcmaeon, Cimon, and the rest, in prosecuting 
him, and was a friend to his own worst foe ; that 
having had many opportunities of enriching himself 
from the public monies, he died a poor man, inso- 
much that he left his two daughters dependent on 
public cbarity, and had not enough to pay the ex- 
penses of his burial. Few will be found willing to 
deny a similar eulogium for public honesty to our 
great statesman, William Pitt. 

Aristides flourished about 490 B. C. and was 
mainly instrumental in conquering the navies and 
armies of Xerxes at Salamis and Platsea : indeed he 
proved himself alike illustrious as a warrior, a mi- 
nister, and a judge. 



97 



Thou rock-bound and undying sacrifice, — 

Ye fierce conspiring chieftains, — haggard queen, — 
Thou parricide, convulsed with agonies, — 

Ye furies, thro' the fearful darkness seen 

Glaring with horrid eye and spectral mien, — 
Appear, appear — for hira, whose magic spell 

From the dim void of intellectual night 
Gave ye dread being, terribly to tell 

The shuddering world a masterspirit's might : 
Yet thus alone not worthily nor well 

Nor equal to a patriot-poet's praise 

In black procession stalks gigantic crime ; 

To thee, great bard, their holier worship raise 
Deep thoughts, high hopes, and symphonies 
sublime. 



98 iESCHYLUS. 



The chief remaining tragedies of iEschyhis are 
lightly touched in the foregoing sonnet. That of 
them, which to us has the most enduring interest, is 
the Prometheus Desmotes, from the circumstance 
that there is in the structure of the story a vague 
similitude to the scheme of salvation. Indeed, the 
notion of a god-descended man suffering the pen- 
alties of justice for man, and filling him with bene- 
fits is so explicit, that some ludicrously stolid in- 
fidels have gone to the extremity of supposing that 
Christianity owed its doctrines to ^schylus ! How- 
ever, it is credible enough that a traditionary ex- 
position of the bruising of the serpent's head may 
have reached the borders of Greece : indeed we see 
the same just ideas in the mythologies both of Egypt 
and India. 

The choruses of ^schylus, though often corrupt 
and much mistaken, are by many acknowledged to 
be the headstone of the pyramid of sublime poetry ; 
but we ought always to bear in mind the great dis- 
advantages under which, in our day, we review the 
fame of ancient dramatists : in the present case, for 
example, out of ninety tragedies, forty of which re- 
ceived public prizes, only seven have survived to us ; 
and even with these the ignorance of scribes, and 



^SCHYLUS. 99 

otherwise the gnawing tooth of time have made 
great havoc : in fact, we are scarcely fair judges of a 
genius so remote, and, since it blazed of old, so 
shorn of its coruscations ; of those eighty-three lost 
dramas, lost for ever to the poet's fame, and the 
world's delight, we can but loosely guess the aggre- 
gate power, learning, elegance, and intellect ; we 
can but faintly imagine their popular influence, and 
intrinsic grandeur ; we can, to be fair upon JEschy- 
lus, only ask ourselves, where would be a Shaks- 
peare, a Moliere, a Tasso, or a Schiller, with eleven 
twelfths of their fame-commanding labours utterly 
destroyed, as the " baseless fabric of a vision ?" — 
and the same considerations are applicable to Sopho- 
cles, Euripides, and others their brethren : truly, 
there were giants in those days. 

The following literal extract from the Prometheus 
Bound, 88 — 108, illustrates the remarks ventured 
above relative to a vicarious sacrifice for man. 

Thou glorious heaven, and ye swift-winged breezes, 
Fountains of riv^ers, and of briny waves 
The countless dimple, — thou too, mother eai'th. 
And thou, all-seeing sun, — I do invoke ye : 
Behold me, what from gods a god I suffer ! 

See, with what unseemly pangs 

Tortured for eternity 

I must wrestle ! such a prison 

This new monarch of the blest 

Hath found for me degrading. 

F 2 



100 iESCHYLUS. 

Woe, woe ! agonies present and oncoming 
Loudly I moan, — whence, whence can an end 

Of these bitter sufferings dawn ? — 
And yet, what say I ? — all the future clearly 
Do I foreknow, nor unawares on me 
Can any misery come ; I must endure 
My destined lot of woe as best I may, 
Knowing that fate is irresistible. 
Yet can I neither leave untold, nor tell 
Aright my wrongs ; for upon Man bestowing 
Gifts, I myself with pangs am yok'd, — the wretched ! 

The next translation offered is a chorus from the 
" Persians,*" word for word, and in the same metres 
as the Greek ; it is an invocation of the ghost of 
Darius, and addressed in the first instance to Atossa. 

O royal lady, grace of the Persians, 
Down to earth's inner-halls send thy drink-offerings, 
We, the while, wiU in our anthems entreat 
The guides of the dead 
Propitious to be from beneath. 
Ye then, inviolate demons of burial, 
Earth, and Hermes, and king of the Manes, 
Send from below his soid to the light ! 
For should he know any balm for adversity 
He could of mortals alone tell it out. 
Does then my liege, blessed in death e'en as a god, 
listen to me, 

Uttering distinctly ^ 



^SCHYLUS. 101 

Dirges of varied sorrowful note 
Full of sadness and misery ? 
All wretched wailings 
I will shriek aloud. 
Doth from the dead he hear me ? — 
Now do thou, Earth, and ye the dark lords of the 
dead, rulers of hell 

Suffer the great spirit 
Your dread palace to leave awhile ; 
Susa's child and all Asia's god, 
Send him up unto us. 
Him, such as never 
Persian soil hath covered yet : 
Dear is the mound to us, dear is the hero ; 
Lovingly the grave hath hid him. 
King of Hades, send him up again — release him. 
King of Hades, 
Send up Darius, mighty king Darius ! 
For never mortals to perdition 
Did he send by toils of battle : 
Wise as a god w^as he nam'd by the Persians, 
Wise as a god 
He was, for he guided his armament well. 
Ruler, thou ancient ruler, — appear, ascend. 

Rise to the high septilcre's summit. 
Lift aloft thy royal sandal dipp'd in crocus, 
O display now the frontlet 
Of the king's tiara : 
Inviolate, father, Darius, come ! 

That thou may'st hear the new, the last evils. 



102 .ESCHYLUS. 

O monarch of monarchs, appear thou ! 
For upon us Stygian gloom heavily broods ; 
Utterly all have perished 
All our youthful army. 
Inviolate, father, Darius, come ! 

O grief, O grief, 
O greatly lamented by friends in thy death, 
Why is it, emperor, emperor. 
That thine own land a two-fold 
Error hath rent asunder ? 

All thy navies 
On that rugged shore are wrecked. 
Shattered, oarless, and undecked. 

Modern associations connected with theatrical 
matters derogate much from a due appreciation of the 
Greek dramatists. The labours of those great poet- 
patriots differed as totally, both in aim and influence, 
from the mere amusing character of modem plays, as 
a solemn oratorio from a light melodrame. The tra- 
gedies of the Greek theatre had ever a direct ten- 
dency towards their love of country, and national re- 
ligion, and may perhaps be likened not inappropri- 
ately to the holy spectacles performed at Rome, and 
elsewhere, during the season of Lent. The " sacred 
dramas" of Hannah More, or Shakspeare's patriotic 
Henry the Fifth, may be mentioned as having been 
written with similar intentions. 



103 



Olympia, with her festal multitude, 

Beheld thy triumph first, in glad acclaim 
Hailing thy nascent dawn of ceaseless fame, 

Eldest historian, — while Jove's sacred wood 
And vocal statue sounded out thy name, 

As gathered Graecia's all of wise and good 
Inscribed upon those modest narratives 

The hallowed titles of the classic Nine : 

For, sweet simplicity through every line, 

With graphicphrase and talent, breathes and lives, — 

Truth, tolerance, pow'r, and patience, these are thine : 
And let not pedants to thy blame recall 
That thy fresh mind such ready credence gives, 
For thou art Charity, believing all. 



104 HERODOTUS. 



Herodotus, who, to omit the inspired Jewish 
writers, deserves his oft-repeated name of Father of 
History, as well from high antiquity as from an ac- 
curacy acknowledged to this day, and a general 
beauty and naivete of style seldom since equalled, 
was born at HaHcamassus A. C. 484. In the year 
445, he read his history at the celebration of the 
Olympic games, and it was received with such ac- 
clamation, that the people perceiving it to be divided 
into nine books, with a delicacy of compliment pecu- 
liarly Grecian, immediately hailed it by the names 
of the nine Muses : a grove sacred to Jupiter, and 
his statue sixty feet high were in the vicinity of the 
games. The style of Herodotus, most unlike to that 
of Thucydides, is artless, diffuse, and full of episodes : 
his credulity has been censured, but as he always 
distinguishes facts from rumours, his credibility is 
seldom impeached. 

In passing, it may be useful to observe that there 
are many things in Herodotus, illustrative of the 
sacred scriptures ; for example, the building of the 
pyramids, wherein are some intimations that they 
were erected by the captive Israelites ; the destruction 
of Babjdon, remarkably showing the literal fulfilment 
of the prophecies contained in the concluding chapters 



HERODOTUS. 105 

of Jeremiah; the miraculous overthrow of the army 
of Sennacherib ; the capture of Jerusalem, — called 
Cadytis, el koyds, the holy city, — by Pharaoh 
Necho : and numerous other matters, which, while 
it would take a treatise fully to discuss, may yet not 
ungratefully to some readers be shortly introduced as 
follow. 

It will be necessary to premise that the references 
are made only to the Clio and Eutei-pe of Gaisford's 
edition, and that as the list is strictly of the author's 
own furnishing, he has probably failed in noticing 
many coincidences : had brevity been less consulted 
it might have appeared in a foim less uninviting. 

Clio. chs. xxiii. xxiv. All fable being perverted 
tradition of some truth, the story of Arion may per- 
haps be traced to the scriptural account of Jonah, 
lix. line 85. Herodotus has probably ascribed 
Elijah's miracle, 1 Kings, xviii. 38, to Hippocrates, 
cv. 1. 40 — 50. This may allude to the capture of 
the ark by the Philistines; and their emerods; 
1. Sam. V. As the Israelites were much addicted to 
the worship of Astaroth, (V^enus,) Herodotus might 
have imagined the tabernacle to have been her 
temple. 

Actions and facts related of Cyrus by Herodotus 
Lib. Clio, which were predicted in Scripture. 
Isaiah's prophecy, chs. xliv. and Iv., was given, 
B. C. 712. Jeremiah's, chs. 1. and h. B. C. 595. 
Cyrus was born, B. C. 571 ; consequently Isaiah 
prophesied of him 141 years and Jeremiah 24 years 

F 5 



106 HERODOTUS. 

prior to his birth. Is. xliv. 27. ' I will dry up thy 
rivers.' Jer. 1. 38. ' A drought is upon her waters, 
and they shall be dried up.' Jer. li. 36. ' I will dry 
up her sea, and make her springs dry:' also see 
Is. xli. 2, 3. Comp. Herodoti Clio, cxci. line 60, — 
67. Is. xliv. 28. — xlv. 1, &c. Cyrus predicted by 
name, his wonderful successes, his being under God's 
protection, and yet, v. 4, his ignorance of the true 
God. Comp. Herod. Clio, cxiii. line 95, name. Idem, 
clxxvii. and cciv. 1. 10, his unparalleled success. 
Id. ccix. sect. 6. ccx. sect. 1. cxxvi. s. 7. cxxiv. s. 2. 
cciv. s. 2, &c. his being under God's protection. Id. 
ccvii. s. 3 and 4, &c. his ignorance of God. Jer. 1. 3. 
A nation from the north against Babylon. Herod. 
— Medes and Persians. 1. v. 9, * an assembly of 
nations from the north ;' ' arrows.' Herod, such 
was Cyrus's army. v. 14. Babylon's depravity. So 
Clio, cxcvi. 1. 5, &c. V. 18. Similarity in fate with 
Nineveh, v. 24. ^ A snare for Babylon,' see CI. cxci. 
V. 29. Of Cyrus's ' archers' we read, CI. ccxiv. v. 40. 
Similarity in fate with Sodom and Gomorrah, utter 
devastation, — the site unknown, v. 4J,and2. Agree- 
ing with the description of Cyrus's army. v. 43 and 44. 
The Babylonians soon retired within their walls. CL 
cxc. Jer. li. v. 8. Babylon's ' sudden' fall. CI. cxci. 
V. 11. Cyrus was ' king of the Medes' and Persians : 
Astyages also, the king of the Medes, was still alive, 
and was nominally king. v. 12. ' The ambushes,' CI. 
cxci. sect. 2. v. 13. Babylon's wealth, &c. CI. clxxviii. 
vv. 27, 28. The nations of Cyrus's army enumerated. 



HERODOTUS. 107 

V. 30. Observe CI. cxc. sect. 2. v. 31. Observe CI. 
cxci. sect. 9. v. 39. ' The feast,' observe CI. cxci. 
line 78, opTrjv. v. 54. The massacre, v. 57. The 
drunken feast : av ivnaOnyai. 

If the passages are referred to the coincidence be- 
tween the prophet and the historian will be perceived 
to be very striking. Rich's Memoir of a Journey to 
Babylon illustrates well the present picture of de- 
vastation predicted by Jeremiah : Belshazzar is in 
all likelihood the Labynetus of Herodotus. The 
fifth chapter of Daniel describes the scene in Baby- 
lon, synchronous with Herod. Clio, cxci. 

Euterpe, ch. xxxvii. Circumcision practised among 
the Egyptians ; a custom not likely to have arisen 
from any other source than the command to Abraham : 
The Israelites had sojourned 430 years in Egypt. 
Ibid. Shaving of the priests ; in cute curanda plus 
aequo operata : propriety of the plague of lice on the 
Egyptians: see Bryant. Ch. xxxix. A sacrifice, 
similar to the scapegoat. Ch. xli. The golden calf 
set up by Aaron under Mount Horeb was probably 
the idol sacred to Isis. Ch. xlii. A perverted and 
confused, but still sufficiently evident account of 
Moses beholding God, (Ex. xxxiii. 18,) and Abra- 
ham's sacrificial ram, (Gen. xxii. 13.) Ch. xlvi. 
' The original eight gods,' Noah and his sons, with 
their waives. Ch. Ixxv. ' Winged serpents from 
Arabia,' Numb. xxi. 6. Ch. Ixxxi. ' Linsey-woolsey 
garments' — forbidden to the Israelites, to distinguish 
them from idolaters. Ch. Ixxxv. Grief for the dead. 



108 HERODOTUS. 

So the account of their grief at the Hebrews' pass- 
over, Ex. xii. 30. Ch. cxxv. sect. 5, comp. Numb, 
xi. 5, Ch. cxxviii. Kr^jvea in the land of Goshen. Ch. 
cxli. Hezekiah's faith, (Is. xxxvi.) and consequent 
miraculous victory over Sennacherib, attributed to 
Sethon. 92nd line remarkable. Comp. Is. xxxvii. I. 
Hezekiah conquered Sennacherib B. C. 713, being 
the same date as Sethon. Ch. xclii. 1. 25. Allusions 
to the sun stopping, e. g. in the times of Joshua and 
Hezekiah. Ch. clix. 2 Chron. xxxv. 20, &c. 
Ne/cwc, Nechos. ^a-ySoXw Megiddo or Magdiel. 
KaSunv, from kadash, holy, Hierosolyma.. The 
character of Apries, or Pharaoh Hophra given by 
Ezekiel, xxix. and Herod. C. clxix. 2. 

The above list is confessedly imperfect, and, ex- 
cept to the very few who may be diligent enough to 
search out the parallels, will be accounted of little 
interest : but it is inserted for their sakes, and so far 
bears its own apology. 



109 



Dust unto dust: the silver spinal cord 

Shall soon beloos'd; the forehead's golden bowl, 
That precious chalice for the wine of soul, 

Be shivered, and its treasure all out-pour'd ; 
The cell-stopt veins, that, as an emptying vase. 

Pour back upon the heart its weakened stream, 
Be shattered all ; the circling wheel that draws 

From a strange cistern, — this corporeal frame, — 
Moisture and increase, must be broken up ; 

And with the shock we wake from life's dull dream 
Still, oftentimes the wholesome bitter cup. 
The glory, great physician, of thine art. 

Shall wondrously from ill-timed death redeem, 
Rallying the routed forces of the heart. 



110 HIPPOCRATES. 



The reader is referred to the twelfth chapter of 
Ecclesiastes, for a most instructive, and highly po- 
etical picture of old age and death. Since the dis- 
covery of the circulation of the blood by modern phy- 
siologists, it has been remarked with admiration 
that inspired Solomon enunciated this enigma three 
thousand years ago. In like manner, without doubt, 
many other secrets of creation lie hid in the Scriptures, 
not perhaps so much for our direct instruction, as to 
prove the antecedence of the Divine knowledge, after 
human philosophy, climbing the ladder of experi- 
ment, has arrived at the fact questioned : but it must 
always be borne in mind, that the hints referred to, 
having an obscurity analogous to that of prophecy, 
can perhaps seldom be explained correctly until phi- 
losophy has demonstrated them: the hand-maid 
Science unveils the novice Truth, and sees upon 
her forehead the seal of religion. 

In illustration of this sonnet, should be added, — 
that the veins at intervals have a beautiful interior 
mechanism of cells, whereby the wearied stream, 
forced up, is prevented from falling back again ; 
also, that Hippocrates of Cos, a very fit classical 
type of his brethren, after a truly glorious and useful 
life of nearly one hundred years, received divine 



HIPPOCRATES. Ill 

honours, and the epithet of " the Great." His works 
are even now in esteem, although upwards of two 
thousand two hundred years old, and as he was a 
direct descendant of JEsculapius, so he may be ac- 
counted the intellectual father of Claudius Galen. 
The great secret of the success in therapeutics of 
this illustrious triad, (who in any ideal apotheosis of 
their art, deserve to stand together like Horus, Nep- 
the, and Osiris,) was that of relying on observation 
and the practical statistics of nosology, instead of 
obstinately adhering to the conventional medicines, 
wherewith the theories of others had attacked dis- 
ease. They, rightly regarding the body of each 
individual as too variably constituted to submit to 
the Procrustes law of universal remedies, compassed 
the advantage of mankind and secured their worship 
by the more sensible rule of a specific treatment in 
every case. Bigotry in religion, dogmatism in sci- 
ence, and quackery in physic are congeners ; all en- 
deavouring after one Shibboleth, one law, or one 
cure, for the case of all : whereas the truer and 
more charitable notion is to regard each man in 
soul, mind, and body, as something other than a 
mere " animal implume," something distinct from 
one of a large like class, something, — (albeit we 
speak paradoxes,) — singular, though in a herd, 
and independent, although yoked under universal 
subjection. " Nihil simile" is the law of nature : 
and be a man's disease of the mind or of the body, 
the student of Hippocrates and Reason will cure 



112 HIPPOCRATES. 

by no unqualified panacea, but by that remedy, 
physical or moral, which is specifically suited to the 
individual case. 

Common sense, and common experience alike vin- 
dicate the golden maxim of Hippocrates, that Nature 
is the great physician, Noas (pvaiq 'ir)Tp6g. The 
energies of vitality in the human frame are, after all, 
those providential guides and guards which save 
through ihe valley of the shadow of death ; but often 
in the pilgrimage of life, overpowered for a time in 
the unequal conflict, that inner escort requires ex- 
traneous assistance ; and the wise master in the heal- 
ing art knows w^ell that too much help in a limited 
space is as bad generalship, as too little ; that the 
body weakened by disease, like a town besieged, 
asks not so great an addition to the garrison, as may 
straiten yet more its famishing resomxes; nor yet, 
is in a state to be put off" with infinitesimal succour, 
throwing one recruit into the beleaguered citadel. 
The millionth part of a remedial drop may have a 
wholesome influence on the imagination, but if it is 
alleged to go further, then man must be all but 
immaterial, capable of living on an exhalation, and 
ready to 

Die of a rose in aromatic pain ; 

Hippocrates need not rise to tell us that this is a re- 
ductio ad absuidum. 



113 



So might an angel weep, thou noble boy ; 

For, all unmixt with envy's duller flame, 
Enthusiastic hope, and chivalrous joy 

To note the calm historian's rising fame, 
Glowed at thy heart, and bade thee emulate 
Those grand attempts, that honourable fate, 

A brother, not a foe : years sped aw^ay, 
And saw thee, still with patriot feelings warm, 
A warrior-exile at thy Thracian farm, 

Weaving the web of glory, day by day, 
For Athens, that ingrate ; thy manly pen 

Eternal good for evil could repay, 
For all prophetic was thy boldness, when 

It writ thy w^orks an " heritage for aye." 



114 THYCYDIDES. 



Of the young Thucydides there is told the pictur- 
esque anecdote, that, when as a mere youth ming- 
ling with the crowd assembled at the eighty-fourth 
Olympiad to hear Herodotus recite his history, 
Thucydides first arrived at the grand idea of literary 
glory, he burst into tears. If this be true, we may 
fairly date his intentions to prosecute his great work 
from his earliest years ; and this may explain the mi- 
nute accuracy, and terse fullness of his narrative. 
However, it was not until half a lifetime of patriotic 
warfare, full of honour, and rewarded, as was proper to 
republican Athens, with most ill-deserved exile, that 
Thucydides began to realize his generous hope of 
adding to the glories of his ungrateful country by 
recording a portion of her history. 

Mitford, — who entertains so high an opinion of 
Thucydides, that he says (i. 178,) his " simple affir- 
mation carries more authority than that of any other 
writer, and has been [in the History of Greece] uni- 
versally followed,'' — tells us (iii. 41,) that he was 
" banished from Attica for twenty years. Precluded 
thus from active life in the service of his country, it 
was the gratification of his leism'e to compose that 
history which has been the delight and admiration of 
all posterity. The affairs of Athens continued to be 



THUCYDIDES. 115 

known to him through his numerous friends in high 
situations there. His banishment led to information 
concerning those of the Peloponnesians, which he 
could hardly otherwise have acquired." It is right 
to state that many others, taking this view of the 
causes of his accuracy and research, have considered 
the anecdote to which reference has been made above 
as very questionable, inasmuch as Thucydides was 
no more than thirteen years junior to Herodotus, 
and was therefore six and twenty when the latter 
recited his history atElis, an age, according to them, 
too near maturity for so romantic a display of feeling. 
But surely, they know little of the innocent ambitions 
of the human heart, little of the eternal youth of 
noble sentiment in souls unblighted by the world, 
who can think scorn of such a generous ebullition : 
the mind that is dead to fame must not plead in pardon 
for its lethargy some fifty years of human life, but 
far more the indulgence of mammonizing cares and 
worldly principles. 

An attempt will be recognized to render the well- 
known KTYi/na eg au by " heritage for aye ;" it is con- 
fessed, that however exact the ad and ' aye' may be, 
the word heritage does not exhaust Krrjfxa : but per- 
haps the fullness of the Greek, including as it does 
the ideas of wealth, possession, and inheritance, is 
not to be expressed by any single word in our looser 
modem tongue. 

Little more need here be said of the famous son of 
Olorus : as a writer, he is regarded as having carried 



116 THUCYDIDES. 

bis country's dialect, Atticism, to perfection; and 
like every other noble Athenian, he was almost as 
much distinguished as a warrior by land and sea, as 
by the just praise of being the world's unrivalled histo- 
rian. Of the Romans, Sallust and Tacitus have closely 
followed his style, and to exemplify the extreme 
of terseness, succinct yet distinct, which those writers 
have imitated from Thucydides, it is known that Sal- 
lust boasted of having described the character of Ca- 
tiline in four words, " alieni appetens, sui profusus ;" 
which, when Tacitus heard, he declared he could 
accomplish it in two, and immediately wrote " rapti 
prodigus:" a marvellous instance of Thucydidean 
fullness. 



117 



Self-knowing, therefore humbled to the dust, 

Self-curbing, therefore in a sensual age 
Pure, patriotic, mild, religious, just, 

Self-taught, yet moderate, — Athenian sage, 

Albeit but faintly the recording page 
Samples the precious harvest of thy brain, 

Where Plato's self, thine intellectual son. 

And the scarr'd hand of gallant Xenophon 
Have gathered up the fragments that remain 

Of thy large speech, with wondrous wisdom fraught, 
From those rich morsels we may guess the feast, 

And note the Pisgah-summit of thy thought 
Bright with true trust, that God hath never ceased 

To care for all creative love hath wrought. 



118 SOCRATES. 



Socrates, the moral glory of the heathen world, 
whose unassisted reason arrived at the grand truths 
of a superintending Providence, a one omnipresent 
God, the beauty and expediency of good works, the 
soul's immortality, and the probable hope of re- 
demption from evil, enlightened the world during 
half of the fifth century before Christ, having died at 
the age of seventy, in the ninety-sixth Olympiad. He 
is believed to have written very little beyond a para- 
phrase of ^^sop, but fortunately at once for his fame, 
and oiu: instruction, minute records of his precepts 
and practice have come down to us from the pens of 
his illustrious pupils Plato and Xenophon. The 
memorabilia of the latter, who was renowned as much 
for generalship as for the more peaceful pursuits of 
literature, furnish us with a faithful portrait of the man, 
who may be called the heathen protomartyr of truth ; 
and the Dialogues and Apology of the former pupil 
convey to us the leading principles of the Socratic 
philosophy, although very copiously mingled with 
the vague conceits and obscure doctrines of Pla- 
tonism. 

The grand outlines in the life of Socrates are too 
accessible to every reader to require much notice in 
this place. Bona of humble parents, a stone-cutter 



SOCRATES. 119 

and a nurse, he nevertheless found in Crito a Maece- 
nas to lead him through philosophy to fortune, and 
although he rose to the highest eminence as a sage, 
he never would accept the smallest fee for his instruc- 
tions, and never made use of his influence to promote 
his own advancement. Though dwarfish in stature, 
and unwarlike in disposition, he yet had the glory of 
saving single-handed in fight both Xenophon and 
Alcibiades ; when derided on the stage by the galling 
satire of Aristophanes, in the midst of the represent- 
ation he had the magnanimity to stand up, and so 
changed derision into applause : and when iniquit- 
ously condemned on a false charge he was offered 
the means of escape, he nobly rejected them, as un- 
worthy of his high character and' honourable fame. 
And so, for envy of his virtues, a victim to plebeian 
hate, perished the wisest of the heathen world. The 
personal appearance of Socrates is universally al- 
lowed to have been very far from well favoi^red ; all 
the likenesses of him extant upon antique gems and 
sculptures represent him as short, deformed, large 
headed, and most indifferently featured : but we may 
perhaps be startled to find that, according to the fol- 
lowing authority, the great Socrates has been num- 
bered among the seven ugliest of the world. A cu- 
rious MS in the author's possession, quoting from 
the Officina of Textorinus, gives as the greatest 
monsters of deformity that the earth ever saw, " Hip- 
ponax, lambographus, Thersites, ^sopus, Polyphe- 
mus, Socrates, et Epictetus." What an opportunity 



120 SOCRATES. 

for the remorseless comedian ; we may fancy the ludi- 
crous effect of an ugliness scarcely capable of cari- 
cature, in the trenchant ridicule of the Clouds : yet the 
moral courage of the philosopher made the scoffer 
quail, and turned the boisterous laugh of fickle Athens, 
into the hoarse shouts of its rapturous approbation. 
Truly, the anecdote carries its own confirmation: 
a man must have had the character of a Socrates, to 
hav^e behaved with his wise boldness in that crowded 
theatre. None but the really great can so brave ri- 
dicule ; none but those whose rule of life is " nil con- 
scire sibi/' can so " overcome evil with good." 



121 



Another godlike son, glorious land 

Athens, glad mother of a mighty line, 
In foremost rank of thine immortal band 
Wise, great, and good, unchallenged takes his stand 

Plato the master, Plato the divine : 
For that, unveil'd before his favoured eyes 
Truth's everlasting dawn serenely rose 
Glimmering from the windows of the skies, 

And gold-bedropping, like the sun on streams. 
The river of his rich poetic prose ; 
Yet clouded much by fancy's misty dreams. 

That eloquence an alpine torrent flows, 
And thy strong mind, dim with ideal schemes, 

Stands a stone mountain crown'dwith melting snows. 



122 PLATO, 



Aristocles of Athens flourished about A. C. 450. 
He was surnamed Plato, according to the fashion of 
the times, which in the worst possible taste immor- 
talized a bodily defect, by associating the idea of 
* broad shoulders' with philosophy ; in like manner 
we are taught to unite the notion of warts with the 
eloquence of TuUy, of a wry nose with the sim- 
ple poetiy of Ovid, and of Scipio with a walk- 
ing-stick. However, the name Plato has now long 
since become a synonyme for all that is superior in 
mind or morals ; and a crowd of admiring disciples 
have not scnipled to add a worthier epithet, ' the 
divine.' It must be confessed that the fame of 
Plato is in great measure dependent upon that of 
Socrates, and that when he departs from the side 
of his master, he is apt to lose himself in mystic 
speculations: the flowing waters of his style are 
often turbid with obscurity, and cover the fatal 
reefs of erroneous opinion. Still, these just qualifi- 
cations are counterbalanced by so vast a weight of 
merit, that Plato, as a human teacher, must occupy 
one of the highest niches in the temple of phi- 
losophy. 

The pure morality of Socrates, and the mystical 
speculations of Pythagoras are veins of various ore 



PLATO. 123 

very distinctly to be traced in the poetical style of 
Plato : and in fact throughout the great volume of 
humanity, nothing can be more obvious to the con- 
templative reader than the large degree in which the 
wisest of men is indebted to his teachers, when com- 
pared with the small quota added by himself. So, 
in wisdom may we look back even to Noah and 
Adam, and beyond Adam to his Maker, the first 
great fountain of traditionary knowledge : and so, if, 
like the bird in the fable, the great spirits of old 
could be stripped of ideas derived from others, even 
they would appear scanty and impoverished: how 
much rather the wise man of to-day, who has 
reaped the fields they have sown ! Truly it would 
seem that the mind of universal man is one large la- 
boratory, in which different proportions of the same 
elements are poured from vessel to vessel, and so give 
out various results ; and while one " potsherd of the 
earth" is glorying in its sweetness, and one boasting 
of its richness, some other more humble, looking out 
of self, sees and acknowledges the Archchemist of all 
excellencies, and ascribes to Him all praise alike of 
mind, as of matter. 



G 2 



124 



Strange, that within the wondrous walls of space 
Ringing on some rare atmosphere far hence, 
The periods of thy matchless eloquence 
Are flying still in vibratory race, — 

O prince of words and thoughts, Demosthenes : 
Thee, centuries agone, great Athens bore 
Chief orator above those brilliant four 
Demades, Lycurgus, Lysias, JEschines ; 
For thy majestic energy was still 

Foremost in might to move, and power to please, 
While midnight toil matured thy graceful ease, 
And country's love inspired each Siren sound, 
Now soft and gentle, as a trickling rill. 

Now like a rushing torrent pour'd around. 



DEMOSTHENES. 125 



Some writers on acoustics have considered that 
sound, which is caused by the vibrations of the air, 
is perpetuated to the utmost bounds of space, al- 
though continually becoming of less and less inten- 
sity : that in fact, every sound produced upon the 
earth is still, in most minute proportions, ringing 
somewhere ; and, to bring a definite example to 
bear upon the matter, that the words of Adam, Abra- 
ham, or Demosthenes, are possibly reaching the 
orbits of Herschel, Pallas, and Mars respectively, jn 
disjointed and centrifugal fragments. Where every 
thing around us is infinite, it would be unwise to 
scoff at so extraordinary a theory, merely because it 
seems monstrous : and there will even be seen in it 
something of an awful aptitude, when we remember 
that " every idle word which men speak is to rise 
against them at the judgment." Absurd as it may 
appear, the very same vibrations caused by the words 
now being uttered, may, so to speak, be gathered up 
and set in form again from the extreme circumference 
of space, by one who is All-mighty. Who can tell, or 
who can gainsay it } — 

It is endeavoured in these sonnets throughout, 
however accomplished, to adapt the thoughts and 
phraseology as much as the limits will permit to 



126 DEMOSTHENES. 

the subject-character of each : and whether or not 
the present be considered a happy instance, it may 
yet be proper to tell the English reader that the 
last six lines are not mere generalizing, but that 
they have an attempted aptitude to the style of 
the great orator. The " brilliant four" were emi- 
nent pleaders, chiefly opponents to Demosthenes 
in the forum and senate, although Lysias was not 
his cotemporary. It is unnecessary to state that 
the Lycurgus here mentioned is not the royal legis- 
lator of Sparta, but an Athenian advocate. 

Demosthenes, the prince of orators, whose speeches, 
even now, transfused into the harangues of our 
home patriots or demagogues, are found to have re- 
sistless power over the mass of men, was in his 
zenith A. C. about 350. It is fair to state, that on 
one brief occasion, his patriotism wavered : but the 
popular ingratitude of Athens was enough to chill 
any heart, and were it even otherwise, not one man 
in the most picked assembly, can be found fault- 
less. 

Characteristically of the Athenian character, Plu- 
tarch tells us in his life of Phocion, that Demosthenes 
once warned him for inveighing against the popular 
Adces, " The Athenians, O Phocion, will murder 
thee in their madness;" to which Phocion made an- 
swer, " And the Athenians, O Demosthenes, will 
murder thee as soon as they are sane again." Such 
is the verdict of the wise respecting popular govern- 
ment. 



127 



If aught of sterling wit, or natural worth, 

The heights of thought, or depths of various lore 
That to the mind's own fountain gushing forth 

Added its wealth as from an ocean store, 
If these be honour, be that honour thine, 
O human wonder. Intellect divine, 

That spake of all things wisely, — taught aright 
By nature's voice, and reason's inner sun, — 

Still can we love thy not all human light 
And hail thy wisdom, heathen Solomon : 

Another praise be thine, O StagjTite, 

For that the world's great winner, in thy school 
His all of power, with all of knowledge, won, 
Learning from thee to conquer and to rule. 



128 ARISTOTLE. 



The wisdom of Aristotle, as a mere child of earth, 
may be profitably contrasted with that of Solomon, 
as a pupil of heaven. Of both it may with equal 
truth be said, that " every bird and every beast he 
knew, and spake of every plant that sips the dew," 
from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop growing on 
the wall. Nor only this ; but regular codes of pri- 
vate morals, social government, and general literature 
are prominent in the works of both : at least it would 
not be difficult to run many parallels between the 
Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, and even Poetics of the 
citizen of Stagyra, and the Wisdom, Proverbs, 
Preacher, and Canticles of the great king. It was 
no little compliment to Aristotle that Plato sur- 
named him " Intellect ;" no small praise that Alex- 
ander was his pupil ; and no low appreciation of his 
merits that every school of learning from Arabia to 
Iceland has in all ages walked in the light of this 
mighty master. 

In common with every other luminary of science, 
Aristotle has met with very various appreciation of 
his character from friends or enemies : the former 
have been so extravagant in his praises universally, 
that, not very long ago, in the first university of 
Europe, permission used to be granted to the student 



ARISTOTLE. 1*29 

v^ho aspired to read Aristotle, in the name of the 
ever blessed Trinity, and kneeling at the Bishop's 
feet ! — while in 1209, when the works of the great 
Stagyrite were first brought from Byzantium, they 
were openly condemned as impious by the council 
of Paris, and indeed many writers, either through 
envy, or obtuseness, have charged on the writings of 
the philosopher doctrines both immoral and atheistic, 
and on his private life so many crimes, that the ca- 
lumny bears with it sufficient confutation. No man 
can rise from the study of the Nicomachean Ethics, 
and believe their author other than a great and con- 
sistent moral teacher ; at the same time no human 
being in his senses can suppose another immaculate. 
Doubtless, the social faults and virtues of Aristotle, 
with his literary merits and demerits, have been 
equally exaggerated. 

The intellectual eminence of Aristotle, and his 
political importance in being tutor to Alexander, 
rendered the philosopher as a matter of course ob- 
noxious to Athenian jealousy. Accordingly, the mo- 
ment the death of Alexander made it safe to attack, 
the popular party openly accused him of impiety, 
and, " to save Athens," as he exclaimed, " the guilt 
of murdering him like Socrates," the illustrious 
author of two hundred and sixty works on every 
branch of knowledge escaped privily to Chalcis in 
EubcBa, where he died soon after broken-hearted. 



G 5 



130 



Truly ennobled in that name The Good, 
Thy spirit sought a thankless country's weal 
Thro' fourscore years with all a martyr's zeal, 

And then, — the fickle envious multitude. 

That democratic city's viper brood, 

Rewarded thee with hate and clamorous strife, 

Poisoned thy fame with calumny's foul breath. 
And for the wages of a patriot's life 

Paid, as their wont, a malefactor's death : 
Athens, base Athens, what a deed abhorr'd 

Of guileless blood lies heavily on thee ; 

Hear to thy shame a Phocion's dying word, 
' My son, forget that thou hast seen or heard 

The bitter WTongs poor Athens heap'd on me.' 



PHOCioy. 131 



There is necessarily much of sameness in the fate 
of illustrious Athenians. After the alliterative 
fashion of the Roman general's veni, vidi, vici, we 
may put it in three words, eminence, envy, exile, 
varied occasionally by patriotism, popularity, and 
poison. Allusion has already been several times 
made to this fact, and repetition, however whole- 
some, palls upon the spirit: the admirers of de- 
mocracy, however, ought never to forget how fear- 
fully, as a rule, the Athenian mob revenged itself on 
virtue : they ought also ever to remember that, with 
very few exceptions, among which the questionable 
character of Themistocles is pre-eminent, the 
worthies of that republic whose fame has survived 
to our day, were of the oligarchical or aristocratic 
faction. Honest minds must really account it a 
marvel that there are to be found many well-informed 
men, who reading history through the distorting 
glasses of the school of Voltaire, attribute all the 
greatness of Athens to its commonalty, all its crime 
to its nobles ; the direct contraiy of this being mat- 
ter of fact. 

Cornelius Nepos gives the 'following account of 
Phocion : " though often invested with the highest 
offices in the state of Athens, both military and civi], 



132 PHOCION. 

yet was he more noted for his integrity of life than 
for his martial exploits. Of the latter there is no 
record," (here Plutarch contradicts,) " while the 
fame of the former is considerable ; and indeed from 
this he gained the surname of the Good. For he 
was ever poor, when he might have been abounding 
in riches, from the honourable and powerful places 
given to him by the people. He, — after having re- 
jected great pecuniary bribes from King Philip, and 
been exhorted by the ambassadors to take them, with 
the admonition that if he himself could so easily re- 
fuse them, he ought at least to consider the interest 
of his children, for whom it might be difficult with 
their deep poverty to keep up the glory of their 
father, — he thus answered them ; ' If my children 
shall be like me, the same little field can give them 
a livelihood, which has brought me to this dignity : 
but if they are to be unlike me, I choose not at my 
expense to feed and pamper their luxury.' He, when 
he had arrived to his eightieth year with fortune his 
friend, at his very last incurred the violent hatred of 
his fellow-citizens. First, for having agreed (as they 
alleged) with Demades to surrender the city to An- 
tipater ; and with the like advice because Demos- 
thenes, and the rest of those who were believed to 
be patriots, were exiled by popular decree." Other 
party reasons are added at length by Cornelius, who 
thus, to the disgrace of Athens, brings the memoir 
to a close. " Accused by Agnonides of betraying 
the Piraeus to Nicanor, after sentence he was cast 



PHOCION. 133 

into prison and brought down to Athens, there to 
suffer the penalty of the law. Thither having ar- 
rived, when from age he could not walk, but was 
borne in a car, a great crowd came together ; some, 
remembering his former fame, pitied his grey hairs ; 
while others grew yet fiercer in their wrath, first on 
account of his suspected surrender of the Piraeus, 
chiefly however because in his old age he had stood 
up against the will of the people. Wherefore he 
was not even permitted to plead his own cause, nor 
to utter a word in his defence. Condemned, and 
some legal forms having been hurried through, he was 
handed over to the eleven, to whom, after the Athe- 
nian custom, public malefactors are wont to be de- 
livered. When led out to death, Emphyletus, with 
whom he was intimate, coming up to him, and say- 
ing with tears, ' Alas, Phocion, what unworthy treat- 
ment is this you suffer !' he answered, ' It amves not 
unexpected : for to this end have come most of the 
worthies of Athens.' Such was the fury of the popu- 
lace against him that no freeman dared bury him ; 
so he was put into the earth by slaves." Thus ends 
the Cisalpine historian's brief account of the life and 
death of Phocion. Plutarch adds some other par- 
ticulars, (specially the anecdote alluded to in the 
sonnet,) and all in favour of the high character and 
talents of the man, who was forty-five limes chief 
magistrate ; and in utter condemnation of his envious, 
base, malignant murderers. How continually in the 
page of history have we to execrate the curse of 



134 PHOCION. 

democracy: ' the blunt monster with uncounted 
heads,' the hydra-headed commonalty, was more than 
the Lemaean pest to ancient Athens; and if the 
Hercules of native talent in so many illustrious of 
the oligarchy has crushed almost the very memory of 
the evil, insomuch that we are accustomed to regard 
Athens as the prolific soil of all excellence, yet still 
the poisoned tunic of Nessus is ever festering under 
the patch-work robe of popular government. There 
is no sophism at once so false and so feeble as vox 
populi, vox Dei : with far more truth will the man 
who knows the average depravity of human na- 
ture, insist upon this severe, but just varia lectio, — 
pro Dei, lege Diaboli. 

The uniform persecution which politicians of old 
have experienced at one time or other in their 
several lives, forces upon our observation the differ- 
ence in conduct, as the difference in fate, of a certain 
influential class of modern governors. Among these, 
we have no martyrs to principle, no generous spirits 
preferring an exile these most dread — resignation of 
place and power — to the more lucrative and far easier 
method of acting contrary to plighted faith, no self- 
devoted patriots ready to spend and be spent in the 
service of their country. Our heroes of to-day, 
so little worthy of comparison with Phocion and 
Aristides, that they come under quite opposite cate- 
gories to those of the just and the good, rejoice to be 
thought and called puppets of the populace : what 
need have they, forsooth, either of wisdom in coun- 



PHOCION. 135 

cil, or firmness in execution ? what need, obstinately 
to persist in a course which they believe to be right, 
if public opinion points to the wrong ? That veering 
weathercock, the will of the multitude, becomes the 
ever-varying rule of misgovemment, and the oracle 
whose responses are not to be gainsaid, is, Clamour. 
Their first great maxim, to use the words of a very 
mischievous financier, is held to be — " if the masses 
do not petition for such and such a measure, cadat 
quaestio:" cadat quaestio! "let the matter drop!" 
what an epitaph on departed will and power to do 
good, — what a climax of weak folly in the mouth of 
a responsible governor : is there then nothing of ab- 
stract right or wrong to be consulted ? are there no 
silent interests to be watched for, no fraudulent plead- 
ers to be guarded against ? Must the wisdom of de- 
bating sages lie hidden and inoperative, as fire in the 
flints of Philoctetes, till the rude blows of physical 
force, or the accidental wind of epidemic lusting urge 
it into flame ? Must the physician with his healing re- 
medy in hand linger idly by the sick man's bed, until 
the patient is clamorous for the medicine ? — Woe to 
the ship, whose pilot is obedient to the breakers; woe 
to the home, where the master cringes to his ser- 
vants ; woe to the body, where the head is guided by 
the members; woe to the land, where rulers are sub- 
servient to the governed ! — Popularity, in brief, among 
the pseudo-statesmen alluded to, is the allsufficient 
test of right and utility : let a measure be acknow- 
ledged by them to be wise, equitable, expedient ; it 



136 pnocioN. 

is proposed, found to be unpalatable, and — aban- 
doned : let another measure be broadly asserted by 
them to be foolish, injurious, unjust; it is petitioned 
for , perceived to be popular, and — adopted ! O 
sage counsellors, O pure patriots, O mighty rulers, 
O men of probity and conscience, — heu pietas, hen 
prisca fides, — for the wisdom and virtue once of our 
ancestors, and now of right our own, (fortes creantur 
fortibus,) is not yours — Elijah's mantle falls upon 
your neighbours. And still, in spite of repeated 
proofs of degenerate incapacity evident to all but 
those " whom the Deity, consenting to their ruin, 
first suffers to be blinded," you are of those presump- 
tuous, who boast, 

Alas, the truer tale for you to tell runs thus, and is 
well instanced, as you pass along the darkening vista 
of Britain's decline and fall, — 

^tas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorem : 

Verily ye are not of those who might have saved 
Sodom : rather for your sakes are we counted as Go- 
morrah. Go, — names, and shadows of names, that 
should have been accompanied with praise, but have 
long since fallen into well-earned scorn, ye Giron- 
dists of our senate, truckling recusants of right, and 
fawning apologists for wrong, ye counsellors more 
hurtful than those who once were the curse of groan- 



PHOCION. 137 

ing Prussia, ye minions of a ministry which it is 
false charity to call " the knowing nothing, and the 
doing nothing," for in very truth, however superficial 
your indolence may make your information, the staple 
of your actions is direct and unmingled evil, — ye, who 
by bigoted discouragement of the free Protestant reli- 
gion, dealing heavy blows at that for which your fathers 
bled, ye who, by studied desecration of those holy of- 
fices, baptism and marriage, by oppressing the impri- 
soned poor, and by favouring the enlarged guilty, are 
convicted of high-treason against the King of Heaven, 
and for having abetted rebellion abroad, and fostered 
insurrection at home, deserve to be impeached before 
the too mild tribunal of your earthly sovereign, — go ye 
and learn how base and bitter a thing it is for rulers 
to be weak, selfish, reckless, and unprincipled : hear 
it in the plaudits of the honester republican, see it in 
the aid of approving infidelity, know it from the 
averted faces of the good, the true, the religious, the 
patriotic ; read it in the indignation of cotemporary 
literature, feel it in the death of your historic fame, 
and in the living consciousness that all of obloquy 
you get, is merited. 

For an end, turn we to better things, turn we from 
such as those to contemplate a Phocion ; of whom, 
as most assuredly not of them, Horace might have 
written his splendid ode, (Justum et tenacem, &c.) 

The man of purpose strong, and just intent, 
Not the fierce clamour of a godless mob, 



138 PHOCION. 

Nor demagogue's, nor despot's menacing brow, 
Moves from his firm resolve, nor the loud storm 
Lashing the Hadiiatic into wrath, 
Nor the red bolt of mighty thundering Jove : 
Yea, — let the mountains at his head be hurl'd 
Sublime he stands amidst a shattered world ! 

The noble heathen, whom moral rectitude endues 
with the strength of a Briareus, can use the same 
language as the pious Psalmist, influenced by re- 
ligious trust ; both can exclaim, " We will not fear, 
though the earth be moved, and though the moun- 
tains be carried into the midst of the sea : though 
the multitudes threaten in then- rage, and the great 
ones of the earth tremble at the tempest." 



139 



O RARE creative mind, and plastic hand, 
Whose skill enshrined in one gigantic form, 
Chryselephantine, rear'd in air enorme. 
The viewless guardian of thy father-land 
Olympian Jove, — pardon to thee for this 
That of the God whose chariot is the storm 

Thy soul by Him untaught should deem amiss, 
Pardon to thee, and praise ; thy labour proves 
The heart's sincerity, though little light 
Scattered the darkness of thy moral night : 
Behold, it quickens ! the colossus moves ! 
Who, who would not fall down ? — Start not, ye proud. 

Perchance your idols are as false as Jove's, 
And ye more guilty than that pagan crowd. 



140 PHIDIAS. 



Sculpture, in all probability, originated in a desire 
of giving a material form to idolatrous objects of 
worship. Hence we find it to be an art universally 
distributed ; the rudest savages of the South-seas 
having stone images of their worshipped monsters, 
in the like manner as the most civilized heathens 
have given substance to the abstract attributes of 
Deity. 

Even among the polished Greeks, the original form 
of an idol, being an un worked stone surmounted by a 
human head, remained in fashion with the latest 
Mercuries, and was transplanted into the Roman 
gardens under the names of Terminus, Priapus, and 
other variations of the " inutile lignum. Quod faber, 
incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum, Maluit esse 
Deum ;" indeed the word Hermes anciently signified 
an unhewn block. 

That the Greeks were indebted to all-inventive 
Egypt for the art of sculpture, is manifest from their 
most ancient style, which possesses many of the cha- 
racteristics peculiar to the Egyptians and their offset, 
Etruria. Phidias, who is known to antiquity not 
merely as the first of sculptors, (although this is 
great praise, especially when we remember that So- 
crates called artists the only wise men,) but also, as a 



PHIDIAS. 141 

man accomplished in every branch of useful know- 
ledge, raised the statuary of Greece at once to the 
highest pitch of excellency about the eighty-fourth 
Olympiad. Praxiteles of Magna Graecia was indeed 
close upon his steps, as to reputation ; but he lived 
an hundred years after the Athenian : and with re- 
spect to the well-known group of the Niobe, some 
have ascribed it to the chisel of Phidias, although 
Pliny was in doubt only " Scopas an Praxiteles 
fecerit." 

The works of Phidias are said to have been very 
numerous, and to have been as remarkable for beauty 
of finish as for grandeur of design : he is said by 
Valerius Maximus III. c. 7, to have imbibed the 
latter from the conceptions of Homer, which, while 
yet a child, he loved to embody in common clay ; 
and by Pliny, to have been indebted for the former 
to his original education as a painter. Bronze was 
his favourite material, and it has even been asserted 
that he never worked in marble : but we know, from 
Plutarch, in his life of Pericles, § 13, that the erec- 
tion of the Parthenon was under his immediate su- 
perintendence, and we find Aristotle calling him 
GocjiOQ Xidovpyog. The great majority of the Elgin 
marbles, and several other fragments in the British 
Museum, are attributed to this great artist. 

The works, however, which in his own day made 
the fame of Phidias, were his colossal statues of the 
Athenian Minerva, and Olympian Jupiter, at Elis, 
the former having been thirty-nine, and the latter 



142 PHIDIAS. 

sixty feet in altitude: their extravagant materials, 
ivory and gold, added to the wonder of these vast 
achievements. M. de Paw has calculated that the 
tusks of three hundred elephants would have been 
consumed in the latter statue alone ; and Quintilian 
tells us that " the majesty of the image equalled 
that of the god, and that its beauty gave new lustre 
to religion." Phidias is said to have derived the 
idea of so much sublimity from Homer's Iliad, i. 
529 : and Horace also borrowed thence his phrase, 
iii. 1,8," Cuncta supercilio moventis." 

In reviewing the many wise heathens who have 
yet been idolaters, it is impossible not to perceive 
very forcibly, that they worshipped the attribute, or 
the deity, through the veil of a concrete image: 
that, in fact, they might have alleged, and probably, 
in their day, and to their own consciences, did, 
the identical excuse which the modern image-wor- 
shipper will now be heard to urge. We have 
seen that Zoroaster, while teaching the characters 
of the divine Being in terms most unexceptionable, 
still suffered reverence to be paid to the emble- 
matical hawk-headed idol : and what was his argu- 
ment but the same now made use of by Romanists, 
that the material representative leads the mind to 
the ideal object of adoration ? that the dressing up 
a doll with trinkets, — (and emperors have done so at 
Aix-la-Chapelle,) — is no more than a figurative act ? 
that the homage paid to a relic, be it bone, or nail, 
or napkin, is acceptable worship offered to a spiritual 



PHIDIAS. 148 

being ? — The true secret of the power of popery lies 
in this, that it comforts and encourages the natural 
propensity of sensual creatures. Not to dive too 
deeply into the possible and actual bowing down 
to false gods in a spiritual sense, whether by setting 
the mind on beauty, riches, honours, or other ramifi- 
cations of self, we may on the surface observe that 
the human heart has ever been radically the same, 
and the worship of canonized priests is not less 
a gross idolatry than that of deified heroes ; the 
very St. Peter of the cathedral at Rome, is an actual 
antique statue of Jupiter Olympius ; there is even 
a verbal similarity between an ancient invocation 
to the pantheon, and a modem litany to saints; 
and the exaggerated devotions paid to the holy 
Virgin are but a fainter echo of " Great is Diana 
of the Ephesians." 



144 



They have malign'd thy memory, grave good man, 
They have abus'd the truth thy pureness taught, 
Beautiful truth with rare religion fraught. 

That to cull pleasure whensoever he can 
Is a man's wisdom, — so he keep in thought 
That pleasure lies in acting as he ought : 

For selfish vice, the fool's besotted plan 
Of mis-called happiness how false it is, — 

What misery lurks beneath the painted cheek, 
How much of sorrow in the wanton's kiss ! 
O would that, where thou walkest now in bliss 

Some garden of the stars, thy wrath could speak 
To these degenerate sons, who blot thy fame, 
Glad in their woe, and glorying in their shame. 



EPICURUS. 145 



If an example were required of the dreadful ten- 
dency of mankind to corrupt sound doctrine, a fact 
unhappily too obvious to need one, a stronger could 
scarcely be met with than that of Epicurus. The 
name of a man, noted at once for learning, morality, 
eloquence, and travel, who shared largely in the 
eternal praise of that wondrous band of philosophers 
who enlightened the heathen world about the third 
century before Christ, that venerable name has be- 
come a synonyme for every thing selfish, sensual, and 
degrading : ' the fattest hog in Epicurus' stye.' And 
whence has all this evil originated ? merely in the 
various meanings of which the word ' pleasure' is 
susceptible : to the pure, all things are pure, and 
with Epicurus, as a votary of good, the Christian is 
a votary of pleasure ; but the man who hunts for 
pleasui'e in impure gratifications will as a sectary of 
ill, meet with the reward of sorrow. 

The philosopher benevolently aimed at alluring 
the Grecian youth to virtue by representing its ways, 
pleasantness, and its paths, peace ; a sentiment which 
especially in a heathen cannot be too highly appre- 
ciated : but men in all ages are too happy to have 
an excuse for indulging their passions, and so the 

H 



146 EPICURUS. 

beautiful pleasure-theory of Epicurus has only 
served to plunge the world more deeply into vice. 

The word ' garden' is in allusion to the well- 
known habits of this teacher, who used to expound 
to his disciples as they walked with him in his garden. 
As the followers of Zeno were caUed Stoics, or Porch- 
pupils, so those of Epicurus were styled ol airo 
Ttjv KrjTTwv, or garden-pupils. 

Without doubt, much of the obloquy, which among 
the better class of men attaches to the word Epicu- 
rean, has arisen from the unfortunate fact that the 
soi-disant doctrines of that philosophy hare found an 
advocate in the atheistical Lucretius. The Aristippi 
also, both Elder and Younger, falsely pretending that 
the tenets of the Cyrenian sect differed in nothing from 
those of Epicurus, by their effeminate and luxurious 
lives added to the reasonable prejudice. " Ye shall 
know them by their fruits," is undeniable evidence ; 
but when the wicked assume the distinguishing ap- 
pellations of the good, the tnie patriot is confounded 
with the rebel, the man of liberal soul with the mean 
utilitarian, and the pupil of Epicurus with the slave 
of sensuality. 



147 



A CONQUEROR that weeps for victory won ! — 
O glorious soul, that mid the patriot fight 
Raged as an Ajax in his ruthless might, 

Then turn'd to mourn the havoc he had done ! 

So wept Marcellus, Rome's heroic son, 

(When haughty Syracuse had fall'n, despite 

Her strength in Archimedes,) — and with care 

Strove — not to butcher foemen, but — to spare : 
Stop we not here ; for ev'n a brighter act 

Claims deeper homage : when avail'd not all 

Thy pious care, but those fierce legions sack'd 
The helpless city in its last dread fall, 

When thy worst foe, thy subtlest, met his doom, 
Thy nobler praise was Archimedes' tomb. 



H -2 



1 48 MARCELLUS. 



The classical reader will, immediately on seeing 
the name Marcellus, bring to mind one of the most 
spirited and touching passages in all Virgil. Mn. vi. 
sub. fin. the " Tu Marcellus eris;" but will quicMy 
perceive from the sonnet, that the subject of this 
eulogy was a different character, and one, which, 
though perhaps less known, was more illustrious. The 
magnificent conduct of M. C. Marcellus at the siege 
of Syracuse, B. C. 21*2, is the topic of our present 
praises. After three years of disappointed patriotism 
and ambition, during which the science of Archime- 
des ahnost single-handed — (see a remarkable par- 
allel in Ecclesiastes, ix. 14, 15) — had burnt his 
navies, destroyed his engines, bafl^ed the skill of 
Home's best general, — one who had even conquered 
Hannibal, — and mocked at the prowess of Rome's 
best soldiers, — those who had heretofore triumphed 
over half the world, — when, after all this he had 
taken the city by storm during the festival of Diana, 
and he knew that, according to the military laws, it 
must be given up to a ferocious soldiery, so far from 
delighting in a bloodthirsty revenge over the fall of a 
cruel and haughty enemy, Marcellus, — with better mo- 
tives than a Xerxes, — wept aloud. More than this, he 
offered great rewards for the safety of Archimedes, 



MARCELLUS. 149 

and commanded his house to be spared from the uni- 
versal ruin ; as the Spartans in the case of Pindar ; 
and Alexa,nder in the same case, of which our Milton 
makes mention, — 

" The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
Went to the ground." 

But his exertions were vain : the philosopher, either 
unwilling to survive the fall of his country, — (for 
Syracuse never rose again to her former honours,) — 
or distrustful of the mercies of the Roman so long 
abused, or, as Plutarch says, actually so buried in 
his mathematical studies, that he knew not friends 
from foes, neglected the opportunities of safety, and 
was killed in mistake by a common soldier. How 
then did Marcellus act } — in a manner that at once 
proved the nobility of his soul, and the delicacy of 
his feelings. Ai'chimedes had discovered certain re- 
lations subsisting between the sphere and the cylin- 
der, and prided himself upon the discovery as a 
crowning effort of his mind: Marcellus knowing 
this, and wishing to honour fallen greatness irre- 
spective of personal feelings, caused at his own ex- 
pense a fine monument to be raised to his memory, 
sculptured with the sphere and the cylinder. It is 
a remarkable instance of retributive moral justice, 
that when at length, years after, Marcellus fell 
on the field of battle before the Carthaginian arms, 
Hannibal his conquerer honoured him in turn with 



150 MARCELLUS. 

a grand military funeral, and sent his ashes to Rome 
in a silver um. 

In one respect, and one only, Marcellus affords us 
a parallel with the ruthless Napoleon: namely, in 
having seized on all works of art, and sent them to en- 
rich his native city : but here he pleaded the same 
patriotism which excessive charity might also impute 
to the more rapacious Spoiler of palaces : we must 
remember that the latter was a Corsican, and that 
the France of his affections was no more than the 
vast ramifications of himself. In all other respects 
the parallels lie with the bravest and best of heroes, 
— with the generous Hector, pitiful to a fallen foe ; 
the pm-e and noble-minded Scipio ; the gallant Alci- 
biades ; the modest Fabius, — all wont " Parcere 
subjectis, et debellare superbos." But why stop 
here ? What shall we say of our own Nelson, — who, 
in the proper humane spirit of modem warfare, — (so 
it be not on Spanish ground,) — sent his boats to save 
the perishing crew of the Orient, and thrice spared 
the Trinidada ? or what, — of that immortal reply 
made by the most illustrious man of our day, to the 
question put by some flippant person, " Is it not a 
most delightful thing to gain a victory ?" " I know 
nothing more dreadful, except a defeat." 



151 



In spirit as I roam with thee by night 

Threading the galaxy on fancy's wing, 
Oft, as I reach a star more sweetly bright. 
My hope will rise and in a rapture sing 
Fair planet, can I ever be thy king, 
A sainted monarch in thy halls of light ? 

For there are many mansions, mighty thrones. 
Glories, and sceptres, praise and golden zones, 
Reward, and homage, crowns, and shining robes : 
Ambition's boldest dream, and wildest flight 
Hath yet to be borne out ; ecstatic soul 
Shall soar triumphant to those burning globes 
That round essential God sublimely roll. 
The life, the sun, the centre of the whole ! 



152 HIPPARCHUS. 



According to the present state of our knowledge, 
it would be absurd to doubt the plurality of worlds. 
Like most truths, it is very ancient, having been 
taught by Anaxagoras, 450 years before Christ. 
The least enlightened peasant has now ceased to 
look up to golden studs in a sapphire canopy ; and 
those whom education has led further by the hand, 
are convinced of the sublime fact, that they see in 
the stars distant rolling orbs, whose dimensions are 
not more wonderful than true : while others who 
are yet higher advanced on the hill of science, with 
strange accuracy can weigh them, measure them, 
see their atmosphere, note their inequalities, and 
amuse fancy by speculating on the nature of their 
probable inhabitants. Is it too wild a thought, that 
after the jubilee years of this earth's renovation are 
past and gone, the spirits of the just may visit those 
bubbles of creation on the sea of space ? nay, that 
perhaps " each distant shining world may be a 
kingdom for one of the redeemed ?" — In meditating 
on immortality, we use ourselves to hope, — (and 
if not truly, why have we ambition ?) — that no de- 
sire of the soul shall be unsatisfied : and to a crea- 
ture, whose essential joy it must be to dive into 
the works of his Creator, no desire can be imagined 



HIPPARCHUS. 153 

stronger than curiosity. The perfected man must 
have a free passport through space : any thing 
like restraint qualifies his heaven. There will be 
a time when the body shall be the spirit's help- 
mate : and truly it were little encouragement to 
the cultivation of the mind, if all that noble hus- 
bandry were confined to a few short years choked 
with the briars of worldly cares and son'ows. 
Science must be a growing, an eternal thing : the 
bliss of the redeemed will indeed be of the heart, 
but effected through the mind : proper affection is 
but the flower of intellect. Truth is immortal, 
and the pursuit of it, in all its paths converging 
up to God, is everlasting happiness. It is a great 
error, into which many well-meaning persons have 
fallen, to regard science as merely a thing of this 
world. Life is in every thing the door to unceasing 
progression ; and the man of cultivated mind, — 
(always pre-supposing " the one thing needful," 
a saving faith,) enters on a spiritual world with ad- 
vantages another has not : and perhaps in the glo- 
rious race towards Perfection, the spirit that sets 
forth with such a start, may keep it for ever : the 
philosopher in this life, (so he be a Christian,) may 
receive at once a higher capacity for intellectual 
pleasures in reward for intellectual exertion. 

The name Hipparchus, and the Herodotean 
character of these eccentric essays, (flying off as 
they do at the tangent of a word, after every sug- 
gested thought,) will induce the reader, who is un- 

H 5 



lo4 HIPPARCHUS. 

learned in ancient astronomy, to imagine that 
the brother of Hippias is intended, for he will 
remember that the Pisistratidae were great en- 
couragers of learning. That is not the case. We 
speak now of Hipparchus of Bithynia, who may be 
called the father of exact astronomy. Coming after 
Thales, Anaxagoras, and Aristarchus, he had great 
advantages : but his grand rule, which indeed led 
to his discoveries and usefulness, was, to take no- 
thing for granted upon any unexamined authority 
however high. Accordingly he improved upon, 
and corrected all who had preceded him, and 
Claudius Ptolemy of Ptolemais, nearly three cen- 
turies later, confessed he could do little better 
than follow Hipparchus. Unfortunately however 
for the fame of the great Bithynian astronomer, 
his principal works were all destroyed at the 
burning of the Alexandrian library by the Caliph 
Omar, A. D. 642. We know of them only through 
Ptolemy, in a work with an Arabic name, the 
bare mention of which would be a parallel to 
the witty '^ Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Be- 
rosus" of Oliver Goldsmith. With regard to Hip- 
parchus, to say something less indefinitely, he 
was the first to make solar tables, a catalogue of 
the fixed stars, and various discoveries with re- 
gard to the equinoxes, the tropical year, the lati- 
tude and longitude, and trigonometry, a more dis- 
tinct enumeration of which, however, would involve 
us too much in the technicalities of science. He 
flourished about 140 A. C. 



155 



O JEWELS beyond price, uncounted gold, 

Children, best wardens of a father's fame, 
Ye joys wealth never bought, want never sold, 
In you the rare unmammoned hearts behold 

The highest earthly good of mortal aim : 
Yon toothless darling at the mother's breast, — 

That ruddy three-year-old who joyous runs 
Jealous of love, in haste to be carest, — 

Those gentle daughters, and these manly sons,— 
Are they not riches ? — O thou worldly wise. 

Go to some home of earth's despised ones 
To learn where treasure — not thy gold-god, — lies ! 

Yea, Roman mother, glory in your gems ; 

Such are the stars in heavenly diadems. 



156 CORNELIA. 



One reason, and it is to be feared a too sufficient 
one, for the rarity of unblemished female excellence 
in the pages of ungallant history, has already been 
given to the reader in the section on Sappho. The he- 
roes of olden time would appear to have been very un- 
equally mated : but doubtless another ample reason for 
the silence of history in respect of the gentler sex, is to 
be found in the retiring modesty of their average cha- 
racter, and the quiet domesticity of their duties. Home, 
that cool resting-place for hot ambitious man, that 
private world of unrecorded heroism, is the true scene 
of woman's glory, the arena of her unostentatious 
triumphs: the noiseless exploits of anxious, affec- 
tionate, self- forgetting, woman weigh to more honour 
in the balance of the sanctuary than the more boast- 
ful achievements of man : and, after all, it may be her 
praise that history, which amounts to little more 
than a record of splendid crimes, has " left her alone 
with her glory," untaiTiished by commendation. 

The noble Cornelia, daughter of Scipio Africanus, 
and even better known as mother of the Gracchi, was 
an'honourable type of her sex. The anecdote currently 
reported of her, that she showed to a purse-proud 
friend, her children as her jewels, is, as it ought to 
be, a trite tale : it was a beautiful thought, and 



CORNELIA. 157 

worthy of a better subject; for the name of Gracchus 
has become a synonyme with seditious democrat. As 
an example of the above remarks regarding the silence 
of history, the voluminous Livy, (if the writer mis- 
takes not,) mentions Cornelia but once, B. xxxviii. 
c. 57. 

The last line has reference to 1 Thess. ii. 19, -20, 
where St. Paul calls his converted children, his 
" crown of rejoicing, his glory and his joy." — In con- 
clusion, the subject affords a proper opportunity for 
protesting against the wicked and atheistical notions 
of the present age regarding the blessings of increase. 
The benediction of God upon marriage can never be- 
come obsolete, however political economists and 
others, may, in their stolid unbelief of Providence, 
think and preach otherwise. The gist of the matter 
is the bringing up ; the largest family of the poorest 
day-labourer, so it be well governed, shall never 
come to want : but neglect of parental duties alters 
the case materially, and converts the blessing into a 
curse. However, duty presupposed, children must 
ever be a blessing, spiritual, moral, temporal, and 
physical ; and the absence of them, though under 
our covenant certainly not at all judicial, must be re- 
garded as the deprivation of a blessing. 



158 



As, for yourselves, — O birds, no nest ye build, 
No fleecy coats, O nibbling flocks, ye wear. 
With sweets for you, O bees, no hive is fill'd, 

O steers, no self- enriching yoke ye bear ; 
Thus for thyself, great prince of pastoral song, 
Toil'd not thy modest muse, but for all time, 
Yea, to the world thy polished strains belong ; 

Was it then virtue in thee, or half crime 
A false humility, sublimely wrong. 

To try to cheat thine Epic of its fame, 

For that, to thee perfection seem'd ill done. 
Hurling thy laurels to the jealous flame ? 
O Mantua, thou wert rich in such a son. 
Yea, had thy Virgil been thine only one. 



VIRGIL. 159 



The classical student will perceive the use that has 
been made above, of the celebrated quatrain, " Sic vos 
non vobis :" it is of course admitted that the original 
application was different. Virgil's modesty was as 
proverbial as that of Goldsmith, and indeed went to 
the pernicious length of desiring to bum the ^neid, 
because the progress of a fatal disease hindered its 
completion : the frequent occurrence of half lines is 
sufficient evidence that the poet had not satisfactorily 
finished his task. Nevertheless, the " limge labor" 
is everywhere apparent, and the writings of Virgil 
owe their fame more to their polish, and elegance, 
than to their exact originality ; for Homer, (compare 
the opening of the ^neid with that of the Odyssey,) 
Hesiod, (of whose " works and days" there are seve- 
ral translated lines in the Georgics,) and Theocritus, 
Moschus, and Bion, (from the Idylls of whom are 
many short extracts in the Eclogues,) were clearly 
the pioneers who hewed out the J)ath of Virgil to the 
epic, the rustic, and the bucolic : still, no qualifica- 
tion can diminish the lustre of his crown ; he found 
indeed the quarry of marble, but he has shaped of it 
forms of beauty, — he took possession of a ijieadow, 
and made it the garden of Hesperides. 

The latter part of the following translated passage 



160 VIRGIL. 

is, in the original, full of power and pathos, and some 
have accounted it Virgil's chef d'ceuvre : when first 
recited by the poet before Augustus and his sister 
Octavia, the latter swooned away at the name of a 
son, so amiable, so excellent, and so short-lived. It 
is said that Virgil was rewarded for the eulogy 
with a sum equal to two thousand pounds of our 
money. The extract has been selected here, as hav- 
ing an additional interest, in reference to the more 
ancient Marcellus already greeted in this volume : 
translations of such passages should always be re- 
ceived with much indulgence. It occurs at ^neid 
vi. 855, where the shade of Anchises, after introducing 
several heroes to ^neas, proceeds ; 

Behold, how glorious in his regal spoil 
Marcellus comes, a victor more than human ! 
He, mighty warrior, shall the Roman weal 
Establish, when by perils fierce assailed ; 
Proud Carthage shall he crush, and rebel Gaul, 
And be the third his votive arms to give 
An offering to the founder, Romulus. 
— Abrupt here spake ^Eneas ; for he saw 
Close by the hero's side a striphng fair. 
Beauteous in form, and bright with burnished arms. 
But joyless look'd his eyes, and soiTOwing brow. 
— Who, father, then is he, that follows thus 
Yon passing warrior shade ? perchance a son, — 
Or one of his illustrious progeny } 
How loudly those surrounding comrades hail 



I 

I 



VIRGIL. 161 

The peerless in himself! — yet dismal night 

About his forehead flits in darkening shades. 

— To whom Anchises, choked with bursting tears : 

O son, seek not to learn the sorrows huge 

Of thine own people. Him — the fates to earth 

Shall only show, nor grant to sojourn there. 

Truly, ye gods, the Roman family 

To you had seem'd too gloriously blest 

Were such a boon their own. O what a wail 

Of mourners to the mighty city of Mars 

That burial-place shall waft ! what sorrowing rites 

Funereal, shall the conscious Tiber see 

Soft-gliding by the new-made tomb of youth ! 

Never shall child of Iliac ancestry 

Raise Latin hope so high ; nor Roman soil 

Shall ever boast in such another son. 

Alas for piety, and ancient faith. 

And prowess in the battle-field unmatched ! 

For not a foe shall scatheless bear the brunt 

Of his arm'd onset, whether he fight a- foot 

Or dig with reeking spur his charger's flank. 

Alas, poor blighted youth of many tears ! 

If e'er thou burst the gyves of thy hard fate. 

Thou, thou shalt be Marcellus. Scatter lilies 

With liberal hand for him, — and I the while 

Will sprinkle blushing flowers, and the spirit 

Of my fair scion will at least endow 

With such poor gifts as these, paying to him 

An unavailing homage. 



16-2 VIRGIL. 

Although it is not very relevant to the subject, 
still the following morceau of the above-mentioned 
Bion is so exquisite in its sentiment, and so touch- 
ingly alludes to the heathen dread of annihilation, 
that the reader will not be sony to meet with it. 
The beauty of the original in its plaintive sounds is 
not to be reached : the following attempt is in the 
same metre as the Greek. 

Woe to us ! — even the mallows, when blighted they die in 
the garden, 

Even the pale-leav'd parsleys, and green anet crowding the 
meadow, 

Afterward live once more, and bloom for another bright sum- 
mer : 

But, — all we that are men, tho' mightiest, greatest, and 
wisest. 

When that we perish, w^ lie in the cold hollow earth forgotten, 

Sleeping a destin'd sleep, unawakable, dreamless, eternal. 

Strange, that the continuous resiurection of nature 
so tenderly alluded to above, should not have hinted 
to so sensitive an observer the probability of his own 
after existence : strange, that a mind which could envy 
perennial weeds, should entertain no hope of its own 
immortality! — St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 36 deduces 
future being from a similar analogy. 



1 

i 



163 



Lyrist of every age, of every clime, 

Whose eye prophetic saw thy strong-built fame 
Stand a perennial monument sublime. 
Not all of thee shall perish : in thy name 
Live memories embalmed of richest thought. 
Far flashing wit, and satire's wholesome smart, 
Fine speech with feeling delicately fraught, 
And patriot songs that with their generous glow 
Warm to the love of home the wanderer's heart : 

How varied is the chaplet on thy brow, 
How wreath'd of many praises ; the bright bay, 
With laughing rose, and ebrious ivy twin'd, 
And myrtles of staid hue, and wild flowers gay. 
Shadow the changeful phases of thy mind. 



164 HORACE. 



" Exegi monumentum aere perennius," " non omnis 
moriar," in all the fervour of poetic frenzy, exclaimed 
" Roman 86 fidicen Ijrae." And verily his boast is 
true. These sublime confidences indicate the mas- 
ter minds, whose memory dieth not : witness Pindar 
and Thucydides, Mahomet, and CHRIST. 

The poems of Horace are surprisingly fresh and 
young: he is the most modern-looking of the an- 
cients; — but is it not that we have copied from 
him ? — he will never be obsolete ; his variety forbids 
it: the moralist and the reveller, the kind-eyed 
friend and the cutting satirist, the composer of lu- 
dicrous squibs, and of majestic hymns, now laugh- 
ing with Democritus ycXatrtvoc, and now weeping 
with Heraclitus of mournful memory, Horace is such 
an eternal type of superior humanity, that he can 
never die : so long as Man is man enough to own all 
the feelings and frailties of humanity, he will ac- 
knowledge to a thousand sympathies with the prince 
of lyrists. 

Shall we be pardoned for venturing here on a task 
which savours so much of the scholastic, as that 
of presenting a few thoughts from Horace in an 
English garb ? at any rate we look for the approving 
suffrages of that fairer class of readers, to whom the 



HORACE. 165 

Odes are sealed mysteries. The fifth of the first 
book may be rendered thus ; 

TO PYRRHA. 

What slender youth on bed of roses, 
PyiTha, by thy side reposes, 
With odours perfum'd sweet 
In shady grot reclin'd ? 
And when her waving auburn tresses 
With neat simplicity she dresses, 
Oh, whom is it to greet ? 
For whom art thou so kind? 
Alas, how oft will that fond boy 
Who now so blindly can enjoy 
Thy venal beauties, weep 
Thy broken vows of love, 
AVhen all thy perjury he finds; 
And wondering at the roughening winds, 
That brush the darkling deep. 
Will woman's folly prove : 
Hapless, — he knoweth not thy wiles, 
But hopes to bask in all thy smiles, 
And have thee his alone ; — 
Still, those are more unblest. 
Who all in vain thy charms approve ; 
For me half-drown'd in Pyrrha's love 
Before old Neptune's throne 
I hang my votive vest. 



1 66 HORACE. 

By way of contrast take a nautical ode, (i. 14,) 
certainly too freely rendered to be called a transla- 
tion : many will be offended at its having been made 
applicable to England, in reference to these days of 
revolutionary movement, but honest men think fit to 
speak their mind. 

Our poor old ship, — what, being launched again 
Into blue water ? — tempt not thou the main, 
Hold fast aport, or all our hopes are vain ; 

Look you, you cannot bring a gun to bear. 
The rough sou' -westers all your canvas tear, 
Mizeu and mainmast — ^both are springing there ; 

The well-tarred sail your leaky bottom patches. 
Or 'twould be nine feet water under hatches ; 
And as for Providence, which o'er you watches, 

Your skipper and his crew have sneered and scoff'd, 

About " the little cherub up aloft;" 

No prayermongers, say they, we're not so soft. 

Well, — though you boast you're built of British oak, 
And trust a sheet that never bent nor broke. 
Avast, look out, — the breakers make us croak, — - 

Just have a care, nor give rude Boreas sport ; 

Your figurehead so fine might go to court. 

But as for you, — don't budge an inch from port : 



HORACE. 167 

I love you, poor old hulk, with heart as warm 
As any man aboard ; — 'ware then the storm, 
Whose thunder roars for — fraudulent Reform. 

To dissipate the cloudy atmosphere of politics, 
here follows the 16th ode, being a " recantation to 
Tyndaris." 

O than a beauteous mother lovelier still. 
Do with my wayward verses what you will, 
Let the fierce flame consume them, or the wave 
Of Hadrian hide them in a drowning grave. 

Not Dindymenes' inspiration fills 
Her worshippers, not wine, nor Phoebus thrills 
The heart more fiercely, nor the mimic war 
With maddening cymbal clashing from afar, 

Excites the Coryb antes with such ire 

As springs from malice ! This nor ocean's swell 

Lash'd with the storm, nor Noric-sword, nor fire 
Nor Jupiter with all his bolts can quell. 

Prometheus, ere his arduous task began, 

From various beasts our various passions chose. 

And plac'd the lion in the breast of man, 

Thenceforth to ravin there in wrathful woes. 

'Twas anger laid Thyestes low 

And levell'd cities with the ground ; 



168 HORACE. 

Anger the cause of all their woe 

Which bade the insulting foe surround 
With hostile plough, where erst the rampart frownM. 

Be calmer then : I too ere now 

When youth w^as mine, enrag'd with thee. 
In verses made my choler flow: 

But O forgive, love, pity me ! 
Let me recant that impious strain, 
And give me thy esteem again. 

The twenty-third is playful and pretty. 

Chloe, you shun me, timidly. 
Like a wanton kid, that seeks 
It's dam amid the mountain peaks. 

With panting heart and fearful eye. 
Trembling, as the zephyr moves 
With balmy breath the waving groves. 

For whether Spring's soft mildness near 

Stirs the forest foliage green. 

Or the scaly lizard seen 
Rustles in the grass ; with fear 

It trembles in each quiv'ring knee 

And looks around it timidly. 

But fear me not : I do not seek 

Like some GaetuHan great wild-beast 
Lion, or bear, — or pard at least, — 



I 



r 



HORACE. 169 

To wound thy neck, or bite thy cheek : 
Then bolder leave thy mother's side, 
And blooming leam to be a bride. 

Our last shall be a very closely translated Anac- 
reontic, in the sapphic metre, to the poef s servant. 

No ! lad, I hate your Persian decorations. 
Ivy -bound chaplets put me out of humour. 
Go not to seek where in some nook or other 
Lingers the last rose : 

All that I care your willingness to weave me 
Is the neat myrtle ; 'twill as well become you 
Serving, as me, beneath the matted vine-leaves 
Merrily drinking. 



But we are warned alike of the claims of other 
worthies, and of theprobable "ohe, jam satis," — rising 
to the mind of many, who may do these things 
far better : let us turn " from gay to grave," from a 
chapter of humanity not less true to nature because 
comparatively trifling, to matters of deeper thought 
and more serious import. 

" Sicelides Musae, paulo majora canamus." 



170 



Hail, Mary ! blessed among women, hail ! 

How should I pass thee by, most favoured one. 
As thus I greet thee in this visioned vale 
Far other than on earth, when sad and pale 

Beneath the bitter cross of that dear Son 
Thy woman's heart did faint ; I note thee now 
Walking in praise, and on thy modest brow 

The coronet that tells of glory won : 
O blest ai-t thou, but not yet fiill thy bliss, 

Albeit where erst the sword pierc'd through thy heart 

Celestial joys in thrilling raptures dart; 
For He, the tender firstling of thy love, 
The precious child thy virgin lips did kiss, 
Hath still to take his triumph firom above. 



MARY THE VIRGIN. 171 



It has been considered proper, by way of distinc- 
tion from the profanum vulgus, to place our Lord in 
his human character between two persons of scrip- 
tural excellence : and be it duly noted that He is 
not numbered among our septuagint, but is one 
above the seventy, the separate from all. The name 
of the blessed Virgin occurs immediately for one 
such pyramidal supporter, and the disciple whom 
Jesus loved, and to whose care from a fearful death- 
bed he committed his mother, rises to the mind as a 
fitting counterpart. 

The opportunity is here gladly embraced of say- 
ing a few words with reference to the very various 
estimations in which the mother of our Lord is held 
by Protestants and Romanists. In nothing has the 
besotted tendency of mankind to run into extremes 
been more fatally exemplified : the former, in many 
published instances, scarcely allowing the most 
favoured of the daughters of Eve superiority for any 
thing in the sight of heaven or earth ; the latter, 
worshipping Mary in ludicrous idolatry as Queen 
of heaven, Mother of God, and the Rapture of the 
Blessed: nay more, some German reformers have 
gone to lengths for which indecorous would be too 
mild a term, in endeavouring to prove the wife of 

I 2 



172 MARY THE VIRGIN. 

Joseph not immaculate; and some reputed Catho- 
lics have confessed their unbelief in the God of the 
Jews, while they worship zealously the Virgin-mo- 
ther of the Christians. 

As usual, truth lies in the mean. Holy Mary is a 
character whom the church in all generations shall 
pronounce blessed. She is worthy of all honour in 
both worlds, — ranks are known in heaven, for hea- 
ven is a monarchy, not a republic, — as the deputed 
cause of our Lord's humanity, the instrument of 
God's incarnation ; as such she may fairly be ac- 
counted Queen among women, and foremost in the 
pure procession of martyrs and virgins. But here we 
stop : no Christian man should refuse to a Gabriel 
all due honour, but, when it comes to worship, — 
" See thou do it not:" no Christian man could with- 
hold all reverence from the mother of Jesus, but if 
he is to pray to her, he demands that she be invested 
with Godhead. 

It has frequently struck the writer, (and doubtless 
others,) that of all the recorded sayings of our Lord 
to Mary there is scarcely one which to an English 
ear does not require some explanation, to excuse an 
apparent sharpness. The abrupt, " Woman, what 
have I to do with thee V especially, (although very 
much softened in the Greek,) is a strong case : and 
without doubt, the providence of God had a design 
for our good in that, and similar passages. It would 
seem that our Lord, particularly in the " Who are 
my mother and my brethren ?" &C.5 foreknowing the 



MARY THE VIRGIN. 173 

idolatrous nature of man, had pm*posely guarded 
against worship of his earthly mother : at the same 
time that her superior honours are amply provided 
for in the salutation of the heavenly messenger, the 
subjection of Jesus in his childhood, and his care 
for her when in the agonies of death. Who among 
the children of Adam has been similarly honoured ? 
And in that brighter world, where Christ in his glo- 
rified manhood sits enthroned, who should receive 
more reverence, such as creature may render to crea- 
ture, than the mother of the King of men, — " the 
womb that bare him, and the paps that he hatli 
sucked ?" 

The distinction between reverence and worship 
cannot be too strongly insisted on. Reverence is 
paid to another as an act of duty to that Being who 
is worshipped from the heart, and only for his sake, 
and with reference to him. Reverence is the branch, 
which extends to many of God's creatures : but Wor- 
ship is the root, which should be fixed in Himself 
alone. 



174 



C^e €(B^M>€®fi.(B, 



HE, to whom, and from whom, all Time dates, 
the goal of the law, the starting-place of the gospel, 
the fulfilment of the old covenant, the beginning of 
the new, HE, who nullified the curse, and created 
the blessing, who bound Satan and his angels in 
adamantine bondage, and opened to emancipated 
humanity the golden wicket of mercy, was given to 
us men, and for our salvation, in the year of the 
world 4004, or according to the Septuagint Chro- 
nology, 5478. The life of Emmanuel, God in our 
nature, was one unclouded blaze of beneficence and 
purity; the Lord our Righteousness ceased not to 
go about doing good, leaving us an example to fol- 
low his steps : Who hath not heard his report ? to 
whom in our day hath He not been revealed ? and 
where is the character of any intellectual eminence 
that has not been affected by the simple record of 
his virtues ? Josephus, Antoninus, Napoleon, Frede- 
rick, Byron, and Voltaire, even ye are found reluctant 
witnesses to the beauty of his life, and unwillingly 
swelling the chorus of his praise : and, O fair com- 
pany of virgin saints, glorious army of undaunted 



THE TOPSTONE. 175 

confessors, ye, throughout the persecutions of a Chris- 
tian's life, and despite the bitterness of a martyr's 
death, with heart and voice raise the blessed paean, 
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain ! 

But the Holy one of God receiveth not testimony 
from men. And yet, what shall we say ? No hea- 
then could, in natural justice, have omitted such a 
man, as man, from the briefest catalogue of the wor- 
thies of earth ; the emperor Hadrian, liberal in en- 
lightened paganism, set up the image of the holy 
Jesus in a high place among his demigods and 
heroes ; and upon what principle should a Christian 
hesitate to praise him and name him above " a few, 
a very few, not all worthiest, not all best," of the 
excellent of the earth ? It is true that such a light 
shines in our firmament " velut inter ignes Luna 
minores ;" it is true that many here in the train of 
our King are frail, ignorant, unsoftened men ; it is true 
that our song is weak, the wings of our fancy para- 
lysed, the building hand, that in a bold freemasonry 
would raise so divine a character to the crown of our 
pyramid, hath poor skill, and feeble power in such 
Titanic architecture : but, should a temple in honour 
of the great and good, however homely in material, 
be found wanting in " Jesus Christ himself, as the 
chief comer-stone ?" should these our greetings to 
men who from time to time have done honour to 
humanity, have no word of cordial welcome to Him, 
who, while in one nature no less than God, in an- 



176 THE TOPSTONE. 

other is no more than Man ? Should our gallery of 
universal worth lack the Grand Exemplar ? Should 
our visioned pyramid be robbed of its illuminated 
topstone, and not rather hear it " brought in with 
shoutings, of Grace, grace unto it ?" 

O Thou, my God, and yet my brother man. 

My worshipped Lord, and sympathizing friend. 
That so hath loved us all, ere time began. 

That so wilt love us still, when time shall end. 
Pardon and bless, if on my bended knee 
As Best of Men I raise the song to Thee ! 

For we can claim Thee ours, as of earth ; 
To us, to us, the wondrous child is given, 
And that illimitable praise of heaven 

Prisons his fiillness in a mortal birth : 
Hope of the world, what were all life, all health, 
All honours, riches, pow'rs, and pleasures worth. 
If from Thy gracious face, good master, driven, 
Whose smiles are j oy, and might, and rank, and wealth ? 

Let no one cavil, if, as in the wonderful picture of 
Leonardo Da Vinci, the centre of our painting have 
least of the divinior aura : human adornments of in- 
tellectual cornice or poetic frieze ill befit the Stone, 



THE TOPSTONE. 177 

foursquare, cut by no human hands, that, joining 
heaven to earth, in the brightest atmosphere of crea- 
ture excellence, crowns with divine glory the pyra- 
mid of earthborn manhood. 

May we, without presumption, trespass longer on 
such holy ground? The hope of doing good is 
our boldness, and our apology. 

The present subject gives occasion to offer a few 
remarks by way of attempting to dissipate a vulgar 
eiTor, which, through the false teaching of injudi- 
cious zealots, tends to place the physical courage of 
the Captain of our Salvation in a most unworthy 
light. Allusion is particularly intended to the agony 
in the garden, which common expounders of holy 
writ are in the habit of regarding as the effects of 
fear at the foreknowledge of suffering ; an imputation 
of cowardice which wiser champions for truth will 
most indignantly deny. The notion is only worthy 
of those w^ho account Jesus of Nazareth as a mere 
man, and that, so humble as to have nothing of the 
hero in his nature ; the better doctrine being briefly 
this : The pure and immaculate Lamb of God stood, 
as a vicarious sacrifice, loaded and covered with the 
blackest guilt ; He, like the scapegoat in the wilder- 
ness, was carrying away the sins of the world ; and 
in the sight of Almighty Justice was accounted the 
worst of criminals. That reproach hath broken his 
heart; he was full of heaviness; the thought of 
the real, not merely acted, anger of God the Fa- 
ther pierced his soul : and in the deadly struggle of 

I 5 



178 THE TOPSTONE. 

his righteous spirit with every species of imputed 
wickedness, His sweat was as it were great drops 
of blood falHng to the ground. There was no weak 
ten'or here ; no unmanly apprehensions of the scourg- 
ings and the cross: the struggle was worthy of a 
God, and the agony was that of a mighty wrestler 
scarcely subduing his opponent. Space and place 
forbid further extension of the subject: but this hint 
is sufficient for the Christian reader to follow out at 
his leisure. 



f 



179 



Not love alone, thou whom the Saviour loved, 
Not faith alone, O favoured more than men, 
Not fivescore years of holiness approved, 

Nor the dear beauties of thy joyful pen, 
Mark thee alone God's friend ; ennobled more 

By the large gift of deep prophetic ken. 
How full of ecstacy couldst thou adore 
With thousand thousand shining ones before 
That throne of glory, pouring out the hymn 

While echoed far the rapturous amen 
From brilliant flocks of thronging cherubim, 
x\nd those four restless Zoa, full of eyes : 

O seals, O trumpets, wonders dread and dim! 
Exile, thy praise be holiest mysteries. 



180 ST. JOHN. 



St. John lived the first hundred years of our era. 
His characteristics were, remarkably, love and faith ; 
and perhaps if any preference can without impro- 
priety be given to one above the rest of the four gos- 
pel narratives, St. John's will to most readers prove 
eminently dear, eminently joyful. Still, the exile of 
Patmos might, if it were lawful, boast of more than 
the common graces of Christianity : his Apocalyptic 
visions, so graphic as to be almost tangible, in which 
the world's destiny is riddled, are the most deci- 
sive evidences of inspiration which an intellectual 
being could require. The word Zoa will stop some 
readers : it is the term signifying ' living creatures,' 
so unhappily translated ' beasts,' in our authorized 
version ; Would this were the only instance in which 
the sublimities, and often the sense, of the original, 
are deformed and darkened. Surely, something might 
piously and judiciously be done to stop the fool's 
mouth on this important point ; it is well known to 
Hebrew and Greek scholars that obscurities, vulgar- 
isms, and seeming eri'ors have no place in the original 
tongues : no one surely will be disposed to deny, that 
all honour and thanks are due to the venerable transla- 
tors of our English Bible ; their labours are worthy of 
the highest appreciation ; they levelled the Rocky 



ST. JOHN. 181 

Mountains that stood gigantic barriers to truth : — but 
still there are stumbling-blocks in the way : everything 
human is capable of improvement ; and moreover, it 
should be remembered that the British languageis a 
current one ; that phrases, expressive enough many 
years ago, have now lost their point, and some words 
once unobjectionable, have from usage sunk into gross- 
ness. It is, confessedly, a dangerous thing to emulate 
Uzzah in propping the ark : but the tme ark is the 
original Scripture, not our version of it, however 
accurate ; and surely persons, zealous for good, dis- 
trustful of self, holy, judicious, and learned, might 
be found fitted for the task of revision : a task 
neither difficult nor extensive, but yet of the very 
first importance. Where are Bezaleel and Aholiab? 
(Exodus, XXXV- 30, &c.) Are there none among us of 
the lion-hearted tribe of Judah bold enough, none of 
the serpent-minded tribe of Dan wise enough to 
work herein for the service of the sanctuary ? or is 
there not a cause ? — 

The appropriate subject of St. John gives the 
writer an occasion to deliver his mind on another 
most important matter, the due administration of the 
Holy Eucharist. Allusion is intended to the com- 
mon practice of repeating the benedictions indivi- 
dually. With great deference to the opinions and 
feelings of others on this point, thus much is here 
briefly ui'ged against the practice : it is not according 
to the original institution, which was to " all," not to 
" each ;" it militates against the habit of the primi- 



182 ST. JOHN. 

tive Christians, however soon the spirit of distrust, 
owing to prevalent heresies, may have introduced so 
exclusive a plan ; the influence it exercises over the 
mind of the recipient is in a great measure a selfish 
one, tending to segregate each member from the 
church as a whole ; while its practical effects upon 
human infirmity are to bewilder with a perpetual 
recurrence of the same words, and to lengthen a ser- 
vice which might with more convenience be short- 
ened : another and the last objection to be raised, is 
the confusion sometimes caused by repetition in the 
mind of those who officiate ; for example, it has oc- 
curred, (and to give a specific instance, in the writer's 
own case,) that the same form of benediction has 
been said for both elements, and the bread or wine 
has been severally given twice, instead of each but 
once. Surely, the simple, impressive and church- 
like form of blessing, in a catholic, that is, universal, 
way, the full rail of communicants, and then in so- 
lemn silence giving to each, would be a preferable 
custom to that which is common among us : it is in- 
deed sometimes, though seldom, seen : and a think- 
ing man will account the general occurrence of the 
individual plan not a little demonstrative of the sel- 
fish and sectarian spirit of the age. Every man, in 
religion as in the strife of worldly competition, keeps 
aloof from his neighbour even at the communion, 
and asks a separate blessing : he considers not him- 
self as one of a true church, whose real members are 
in a state of safety, but as an isolated soul toiling 



ST. JOHN. 183 

unaccompanied up to tlie rock of salvation : he car- 
ries his mercantile feelings of individual, if not rival, 
interest, even to the altar of God, and finds the sacred 
elements themselves doled out to him as to one among 
many contending candidates, whereas he ought to 
see in them, a feast liberally distributed to a united 
band of brothers : he is watered as if he were 
a weak, diurnal, independent weed, and forgets that 
he is to draw nourishment as a leaf of the perennial 
tree : he is fed as an individual pilgiim, the casual 
occupant of the caravanserai, rather than as one of 
many sons, whose birthright it is to sit, long-invited 
guests, at their Father's table. 

It is, indeed, true that personal religion is of the 
first importance ; that Christianity is a race, a strife, 
a warfare ; but, as the large heart of the patriot in 
seeking the welfare of his country more actually 
serves the petty interests of his own small circle, than 
do the narrow views of the selfish individual schemer, 
so the zealous churchman in aiming at the good of 
the whole, fails not to be rewarded with the better 
as his single share : his race is not a flight for safety, 
but as one of a flock of doves from Lebanon to Car- 
mel ; his strife is to keep down self, not to set it up 
as an idol even in the temple of Jehovah ; his war- 
fare may have to be waged more continually even 
with the specious power of religious selfishness, than 
with foes that come in less angelic guise : he has, 
upon principles of humanity, much more need to lay 
to heart, " He that will save his soul, shall lose it," than 



184 ST. JOHN. 

" know ye not that all run and one obtaineth the 
prize :" in this, as in all other practical matters, he 
must amalgamate the seeming paradoxes of Scripture : 
all religious errors have grown out of isolated texts ; 
the Bible, to be read aright, must be read as a whole 
addressed to a whole, for evxry heresy that has arisen 
in the world has sprung from the false habit of con- 
sidering it a collection of separate propositions 
addressed to the judgment of individuals. Private 
judgment is, indeed, the inalienable right of a ra- 
tional being ; but that rational being should, to be 
safe, remember, that he is one of many, and that 
where all are fallible, the inference of reason (to go 
no higher, and not to lay too much stress on the 
attributes of the collective church,) is, that the long- 
tried judgment of the many must be nearer truth 
than the passing notion of the one. — Let these things 
be considered. 



185 



j>c. pa®?:. 

What thanks to pay thee ? — by what stretch of thought, 

Wliat happy flight of reverential praise, 
What tuneful hymn with holiest ardour fraught, — 
A welcome, worthy of the heart, to raise 
Even to thee, — whose Apostolic zeal 
Hath blest, corrected, comforted, and taught 
All generations for eternal weal ? 
God send the grace, with contrite breast to feel 
The preciousness of each high argument 

In those dear letters writ from heaven to earth, — 
thus to gather manna, kindly sent 

To feast our souls in more than Egypt's dearth, — 
Thus, like to thee, through might in mercy lent. 
Dying indeed to sin, by second birth. 



186 ST. PAUL. 



Very little need here be said of a character hap- 
pily so well kno\\Ti as that of the Apostle Paul. The 
blessings of scriptural education hare, it is to be 
hoped, rendered most persons as familiar with his 
doctrine, as with his history. However, it must to 
some extent, not unimportant, be acknowledged, that 
the mere English reader who would study St. Paul's 
Epistles has many more obstacles to contend with, 
for the matter of obscurity, than if he could have 
recourse to the Greek : and the writer would here 
again for the last time take the opportunity of m'ging 
some authorized revision of our present translation. 
The writings of St. Paul, perfectly logical as they 
are, often appear to us unnecessarily confused ; first, 
from a word, which in the original has various mean- 
ings, being rendered invariably by one, irrespective 
of the different sense which the context may require : 
secondly, from different Greek words being trans- 
lated by the same word in English : thirdly, from 
obsolete expressions of our own : fourthly, from too 
little allowance having being made for general 
orientalisms, or specific idioms : and, fifthly, from 
some unwarrantable translations. It is manifest, 
that in fairness, instances of the above should not be 
stated without entering at more length than is here 



ST. PAUL. 187 

to be desired into biblical and philological criticism : 
the student in theology will be at no loss for ex- 
amples, while the ordinary scripture reader would 
with reason feel dissatisfied at objections, the argu- 
ments of which are unstated, or to him unintelligible. 
Nevertheless, with a view to do good, and by way 
of establishing the position by definite instances, the 
writer will produce three, which if they stood alone 
in error, would call imperatively for authoritative 
revision. Take, briefly, Romans, xi. 1, where the 
apostle's religious and patriotic hope, ^7} -yf'votro, is 
turned into the veiy objectionable phrase " God 
forbid," — sounding, as commonly read, not unlike a 
violation of the third commandment ; the literal 
sense is, may it not happen, or, be it far from him, 
which, though weaker, gives no seeming precedent 
for an oath. Take again, I Cor. viii. 1 — 5, (to save 
a repetition of four verses, let it be turned to, — ) 
where the following simple and accurate change 
makes perfect sense of a passage which in our ver- 
sion has been much misunderstood, — " Now as 
touching things offered to idols, we know, (for we 
all have knowledge ; knowledge puffeth up, but cha- 
rity edifieth ; and if any man think that he knoweth 
any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to 
know : but if any man love God, the same is kno^Ti 
of him. As concerning therefore the eating of 
those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, 
we know) that an idol is nothing in the world, and 
that there is no other God but one." Or it is pos- 



188 ST. PAUL. 

sible to place the parenthesis before — (we know that 
we all have knowledge, &c. — ) As the sentence stands 
at present, the argument is unintelligible. A third, 
and, to the writer's mind, in its consequences the 
worst possible case, occurs in 1 Cor. xi. 29, where 
K^iLluLay which means " penalty," and is explained 
afterwards by the chastenings of temporal disease, is 
fearfully forced into " damnation ;" a word, which 
especially as adopted into our sacramental service, 
has occasioned the most anxious misery to the con- 
scientious, but unlearned, recipient ; a word, which 
totally unwarranted as it is both in itself and from 
the context, has probably done more harm to the 
Established Church by frightening persons from her 
communion, than any other abuse whatever ; a word, 
w^hich, as a gi-eat moral and religious hindrance 
lying at the steps of the altar, as a spectre of eternal 
horror to the tender conscience, as a phrase harden- 
ing the ill-prepared by sentencing beforehand even 
those worst whose lot can never be known here, 
ought to be removed, unveiled, expunged. KaraKpi/uLa, 
(v. 32,) " penalty to the uttermost" is the fate of a 
world that lieth in the wicked one : but Kpiifia is a 
" warning" to the careless, a " chastening" to the 
faithless, a "punishment" to the graceless : a giving 
over of the body to a temporal affliction, if so be 
that the soul may be gained through the body's tem- 
poral loss : it is a voice to the uninitiated, " procul 
este profani," for you enter to your hurt ; but alas, 
it has often appeared to the humblest and most pen- 



ST. PAUL. 189 

itent as a thunderbolt of everlasting wrath hanging 
over his distracted head, like the svrord of Dionysius 
over Damocles at the royal festival. 

With unfeigned deference to the judgment of 
many good and many wise, who will oppose even 
so desirable a change on the ground of inexpe- 
diency, it is submitted that such an error as the 
last, (one which has arisen probably from time, 
the original sense having been far different,) need 
not and ought not longer to exist. There are many 
others of less urgent consequence ; still those many 
are an injurious hindrance to most hearers when 
the epistles are read aloud ; they often deter the 
enquirer in private from reading them to himself; 
or he is used to the words, and thinks not of the 
recondite sense: and although to " let well alone" 
is a wholesome rule in general, yet surely for mat- 
ters of religion, our English Bible ought to be 
as perfect as possible. There are doubtless several 
weighty objections to making any thing here that 
would savour of needless innovation: but still 
the change need be very little ; and for the interests 
of the Establishment, the last cited example alone 
appears to the writer a conclusive argument in 
favour of that little : without disturbing the grand, 
simple, antique, sacred fabric, a brick or two might 
be judiciously extracted or inserted by way of re- 
pair : our version might be left as it is, with an au- 
thorized list of corrigenda : to modernize it, would 
be to spoil it. We ought always to bear in mind 



190 ST. PAUL. 

that verbal inspiration can apply only to the original 
tongues ; and that it is our duty to approach those 
tongues as nearly in sense as possible. 

The above remarks are intended to be made in 
much humility, and as directing attention to the ex- 
pediency of the matter, rather than dogmatically 
asserting it. 



191 



Z ® ^ # 35 5 a. 

Palmyra, — widowed city of the dead, 

How mournfully thy marshalled columns stand 

Grey sentinels above that desert sand. 
Where once thy patriot multitudes were spread 

In serried ranks around Zenobia's car 
Hurling defiance at despotic Rome, 

When country's love inspired the righteous vvar 
For temples, Lares, liberties, and home. 

Yea, to the death : Palmyra, thy last boast 
Was this undaunted queen, the chaste, the fair, 
Wise to decide, and resolute to dare. 

Sage among sages, heroine in the host : 
Hide not the fetters, as thou walkest there, 

Liberty's martyr, those become thee most. 



192 ZENOBIA. 



Palmyra is commonly imagined to be the " Tad- 
mor in the desert," of holy writ, 2 Chron. viii. 4, 
which was built by Solomon : indeed it is so named 
by the neighbouring tribes to this day. It is certain 
however that all the remains of this famous city 
which time has spared to our view are of the latest 
style of Greek architecture ; whereas a city built by 
Solomon would almost certainly partake of the 
peculiar solidity of Egyptian work, from his con- 
nexion with that country through Pharaoh's daughter. 
Indeed, beyond the name, in which vague tradition 
may have erred, we have no unimpeachable evidence 
that Palmyra is the Tadmor of King Solomon : the 
situation and the style are both against the suppo- 
sition ; and the word Tadmor, being derived from 
the Hebrew name for palm-tree, is equally applicable 
to Petra, or more accurately, to any city erected on 
an oasis covered with date-trees in the midst of the 
desert. It is submitted, that Solomon could not 
have raised such a Palmyra as its ruins sample to us, 
and also, that he, if any one, was likely to have left 
some record of his building, some solid architectural 
proof which should stand to our day. Perhaps we 
must look for the Tadmor of the scriptures nearer to 
Hamath than Palmyra is ; although indeed Josephus 



ZENOBIA. 193 

(Ant. viii. 6,) would seem to favour the common 
opinion. 

Zenobia flourished about the middle of the third 
century A. D. She was in many respects a most 
uncommon personage, and her patriotism, learning, 
and beauty, her feminine modesty and reckless cou- 
rage, are fully and credibly recorded in the pages of 
history. She was subdued, might against right, by 
the warlike emperor Aurelian, and was forced to 
walk at his triumph in fetters of gold : however, the 
conqueror in some degree extenuated the guilt of his 
invasion by conferring large grants upon the de- 
throned empress, and enabling her to live at Rome 
in splendid captivity until her death. 

The present appearance of Palmyra, and Balbec, 
which are about one hundred and thirty miles apart, 
is represented to be analogous to that of the ancient 
sites of the once majestic cities in Upper Egypt; 
groves of the most stately columns, and sculptured 
masses of the finest architecture, rising out of a sea 
of sand. Doubtless, there was a time when Syria, 
Egypt and many now sterile parts of Judaea were 
luxuriant in fertility, and swarming with abundant 
population. But those nations were rejected; the 
heaven over them became brass, the earth beneath 
like iron, the land became powder and dust, and that 
which had blossomed like the rose, was blighted 
into desert. 



194 



Mournfully breaks the north wave on thy shore 
Silent lona, and the mocking blast 
Sweeps sternly o'er thy relics of the past, 

The stricken cross, the desecrated tomb 
Of abbots, and barbarian kings of yore : 

Thee from the blight of death's encircling gloom 
Colomba saved, and to thy cloisters grey 

In pious zeal for God, and love for man, 

Of mighty truth led on the conquering van. 
And largely pour'd fair learning's hallow'd ray 

On night's dark deep, — an isolated star 
The Pharos of those arctic Cyclades 

That lighted to her rocky nest from far 
Mercy's white dove, faint flutterer o'er the seas. 



COLOMBA. 195 



Colomba, who has been canonized by the Romish 
church, from which however he differed in some 
essential particulars, flourished in the sixth century 
of our era. He was a native of Ireland, but the op- 
position which his zeal for religion and morals met 
with in that unhappy country, (a country even in 
those early times, the natural home of poverty, dis- 
cord and oppression,) so entirely alienated him from 
it, that in the spirit of Paul at Corinth casting off the 
Jews, and thenceforth turning to the Gentiles, (Acts, 
xviii. 6,) he " left his native soil with deep resent- 
ment, and vowed never to live within sight of that 
hated island." Accordingly, after rejecting the island 
of Oronsay, solely for its too near propinquity, he 
settled, at the invitation of a certain Bridius, on the 
more northern isle of Huy, which has been ever since 
called by the name of Icolmkill, or lona ; names sig- 
nifying respectively in Celtic and Hebrew the same 
as the Latin word Columba, " dove ;" a beautifully 
poetic name for that other " ultima Thule," the dis- 
tant western outpost of Learning. The feeling of 
Colomba against persecuting Ireland has been re- 
markably perpetuated to our day by the local name 
still given to a cairn-cro^^ned hill on the island, 
which, whatever be its orthography, is pronounced 

K 2 



196 COLOMBA. 

Caman-col-reh-Ireum, or "the mound of the back to 

Ireland." 

The diocese of lona formerly extended to all the 
neighbouring isles, which were called respectively 
Norder, and Soder, or Northern and Southern : the 
bishopric of Sodor and Man has, with the jurisdiction 
of the South, pei-petuated the name, although probably 
few persons are aware of its origin or meaning. 

Dr. Johnson, who certainly was not liable to en- 
thusiasm, and least of all in matters pertaining to our 
brethren north of the Tweed, exclaims, " That man 
is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not 
gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose 
piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of 
lona;" and it is certainly a thrilling sight, after having 
indulged the feelings of natural religion in the giant 
cave of StafFa, surrounded by its thousand columns, 
and stunned by the deafening waters which break 
fearfully beneath you, to go a few miles further over 
that cheerless sea, and amidst the grey desolate 
quire, the moss-grown walls, the neglected royal 
tombs, the broken crucifixes, the departed memories 
of lona to rise to the sublimer contemplation of truths 
revealed. 

Probably it was mainly due to the influence of Co- 
lomba, that the lamp of learning shone for a few short 
years on the inhospitable shores of Iceland : for at 
one time the university of lona was a chief seat of 
sanctity and science ; its basaltic soil was hallowed 
by more than three hundred stone crosses ; and the 



COLOMBA. 197 

tombs of forty-eight kings, including" devilish Mac- 
beth," prove how highly the magnates of the north 
honoured it with their patronage. But the curse of 
idolatry was there ; image-worship outweighed with 
evil the lighter good of literature and civilization : 
the Almighty withdrew the shield of his providence; 
from the high altar was heard that fearful voice, Let 
us depart : so, the bloody Dane came as the Lord's 
avenger, and the judgment of fire and sword swept 
from the land those degenerated worshippers: 
behold she sitteth desolate, her glory is gone, — 
" Ichabod" is graven on the rocks and ruins of lona. 



198 



33 e fi e. 

Around thy memory there lingereth still 
A rare and gracious savour, reverend man, 
Whose patient toil so long ago began 

To sink the sacred wells on Zion-hill, 

Whence issued ancle-deep truth's earliest rill, 
That deepening soon, in copious torrents ran 

From thee their sometime patriarch, until 
They reach us fathomless, a mighty sea : 
O simple priest, pious, and just, and true, 
Religious, learned, — thousand thanks are due 

From England, and her children unto thee : 
Thou, like thy master, bowing His meek head, 

Didst view thy perfect work of piety. 
And die rejoicing it was finished. 



BEDE. 199 



Pindar says fJLeyaXtJv S aeOXiov Motaa (jLe/uLvacrOai 
(jtiXu, " the Muse delights in commemorating great 
exploits," and though he might have meant it as ap- 
plied to mighty conquerors, wrestlers, charioteers, 
and other muscular heroes of Olympia, we may in 
these our peaceful times set Clio, Euterpe, or Mel- 
pomene, the more humanizing task of celebrating 
superiority in mind and excellence in morals : a 
glory greater than that of being a pentathlete, and to 
be rewarded with a richer crown than one of olive. 

The venerable Bede was such an one, having been 
deservedly famous alike for his personal worth, and 
his literaiy labours: although nothing more exalted 
in station than a simple Northumbrian ecclesiastic, 
who scarcely went beyond the limits of his native 
parish, he may justly be regarded as the chief re- 
vivor of learning among our ancestors. His name 
stands out prominently from the darkness of his 
times, as equally distinguished for piety, purity, and 
talent, and many of his works, (of which the Eccle- 
siastical History was translated by King Alfred,) have 
come down to us incorrupt. It is gi'eatly to the 
credit of Bede, and shows his mind to have been 
much in advance of the age in which he lived, that 
he did all in his power to strengthen the secular and 



200 BEDE. 

more industrious clergy, against the idle monks ; and 
scarcely less so, that, being confessedly a paragon of 
wisdom and sanctity, no miracle was ever attributed 
to him. The manner of his death was truly glorious, 
and would have gratified a Solon, in that airkdavi koX- 
Aio-ra. Herod, i. 30. The excellent priest, (for his great 
mind sought none of the rewards of earthly ambition, 
and he remained to his death an unbeneficed priest,) 
in the sixty-third year of his age was dictating to his 
scribe the Saxon translation of St. John's Gospel. 
Mortal illness came upon him just as the work was 
approaching to a close, and when the amanuen- 
sis in encouragement said, " Master, there is now but 
one sentence wanting," Bede gasped it out with a 
" Quickly, quickly," and on hearing " It is now done," 
said, " It is now done," and instantly expired. 

Of course, the allusion in the sonnet is made to 
the Vision of the holy waters seen by Ezekiel, 
ch. xlvii. to which readers are referred. 



201 



Whence comest thou ? — What kingdom of the stars 
Is thine, imperial ghost ? — with homage meet 
Caesar, Augustus, thee my song shall greet 
And hail a Charlemagne the second Mars ! 

Yet other notes must fill the praiseful song 
Than those hoarse clamours of continual wars, 

Or never had I met thee blest among 
Children of light : thee, rectitude of soul 
Majestic firmness, patriot excellence. 
Simplicity and truth and sterling sense 
On the bright record of the Great enroll : 
Rejoice, fair France, in those dear memories 
Of him, thy somewhile glory and defence : 
Such monarchs earn the fame that never dies. 



K 5 



202 CHARLEMAGNE. 



The history of Charlemagne will be found to fur- 
nish some extraordinary parallels with that of Na- 
poleon Buonaparte. The early developement in the 
wai'like pair of wonderful military talents ; the rest- 
less desire in them to employ their insurgent subjects 
even in aimless wars, by way of a safety-valve to their 
volcanic empires ; the application of popes (Adrian, 
Leo III. and Leo X.) for the assistance of both, and 
the same reward for services, in receiving at Rome 
the titles Caesar, Augustus, and Emperor of the West; 
the carving out of kingdoms for members of their 
own families, Charlemagne having crowned se- 
veral of his sons ; the extent of the dominions 
of both, the empire of Napoleon in its most power- 
ful state having been co-extensive \^ith that of 
Charles ; the countenance which they gave to 
literature and the arts, and the institution of a 
learned academy by both : their endeavours to over- 
come nature, the one by levelling Alps, the other by 
uniting the Rhine with the Danube, and so attempt- 
ing a navigable passage through Europe from the 
Northern Ocean to the Black Sea ; the cruel massacres 
of prisoners perpetrated at Verdun and at Jena ; 
the establishment of codes of law, the great encou- 
ragement of agriculture, (compare Charlemagne's 
introduction of better sorts of grain, with Napoleon's 



CHARLEMAGNE. 203 

mania for beet-root sugar,) and the ruinous attention 
paid by them to their several navies (witness the for- 
mer's light-house at Boulogne, and the dock-yards of 
the latter in the Scheldt ;) and finally, in the midst of 
a splendid military court, the extreme simplicity of 
costume, excepting only on state occasions, frugality 
of living, and domestic virtues generally character- 
istic of both emperors. 

" Nihil simile quatuor pedibus currit ;" and fur- 
ther comparison with Charlemagne must detract 
largely from the honours of Napoleon. The latter 
will often appear in the light of an arrogant adven- 
turer, the spoilt child of fortune, the reckless cham- 
pion of infidelity ; while the former is never seen 
otherwise than as a legitimate " king of men," a de- 
fender of the faith, a conquering monarch, with whom 
prosperity was too natural a birthright to urge him 
into puerile presumption : the first was an Alexander, 
or a Scipio, conquering indeed for glory, but to the 
ultimate good of the vanquished ; the last an Attila, 
or a Tamerlane, scourging the nations: Charlemagne, 
having reigned in majesty forty-seven years, was bu- 
ried with royal pomp in his own mausoleum, at xA.ix- 
la-Chapelle, where the pilgrim still kisses his giant 
bones : Napoleon, after a precarious rule of some 
twelve years, deserted by all, and accounted the great 
enemy of mankind, lived to be a hooted outcast from 
the civilized world, and then died to occupy the 
scant six feet of a hostile soil, after the glories of his 



^04 CHARLEMAGNE. 

wonderful career had been all but obliterated by the 
petulant nothingness of the exile of St. Helena. 

" Wars, and rumours of wars" were necessarily the 
chief characteristic of the age of Charlemagne : socie- 
ty was in a transition state, turbid from its foundation 
upward : men could with great difficulty find quiet 
or opportunity to cultivate the pursuits which soften 
manners and enrich minds : the eye was more used 
to flash at a foeman through its barred vizor, than to 
pore upon infrequent books: the hand was better 
skilled in wielding the sword, than in guiding the 
pen: might was the high tribunal against which 
there was no appeal, and the discordant world was 
groaning in its age of iron. Under such external 
disadvantages how great and unexpected an addition 
is it to the fame of the warlike Charlemagne, to 
find in him the patron of science, the great encou- 
rager of the arts of peace, the liberal and enlightened 
MsBcenas of all the little learning which Europe 
then could boast ; to know how diligently, and how 
successfully, he laboured to educate as well himself, 
as his subjects ; to perceive in his naturally and 
circumstantially rugged nature the humanizing in- 
fluences of secular and religious truths; to see 
that in much he deserved, as he aspired, to be 
likened, as " a man of war," with David, a name by 
which he delighted to be called. 

The blame of exterminating battles should chiefly 
be charged upon the spirit of the times in which this 



CHARLEMAGNE. 205 

great king flourished; for his public services, and 
private qualities show him to have been in mind far 
beyond his age. " His highest praise is that he 
alone prevented the extinguishment of science in the 
west, and poured oil into her expiring lamp ; and 
that he accounted it the essential quality of safe 
government to better the condition of the nations 
he had conquered." 

The empire of Charlemagne arose about the year 
800, and the Frank dynast)'^ which sprang from it 
lasted even to 1272, when the dominions of France 
and Austria were separated, and Rodolph of Haps- 
burgh, the founder of the present reigning house, re- 
tained the dignity of emperor. In the tenth cen- 
tury, Austria, as a frontier state, was governed by a 
Lieutenant, in the eleventh it was raised into a mar- 
quisate, soon after gave the title of duke, and was 
not strictly independent until the defeat of Othogar 
by Rodolph. 



206 



Visions of Oriental pomp axound 

Teem on my sight ; a grand ideal scene 
Where upon Tigris Bagdat sits as queen 

Rises in dreamy splendour from the ground ; 

T hear the clashing cymbals, and the sound 
Of brazen horns, and loud monotonous drums 
From turban'd thousands in their war array 
About Alraschid, as the conqueror comes 

From perjured Greece, triumphant in the fray 

Best lord, and wisest judge, that ever sate 

In the black mantle of the Caliphate, 

When we recall thy race and thee, Haroon, 

We note thee still the first, most good, most great, 
Among those lesser stars the crescent moon. 



HAROON ALRASCHID. 207 



The reign of Alraschid, or The Just, youngest son 
of the Caliph Al Mohdi, extended from the one 
hundred and seventieth to the one hundred and 
ninety-third year of the Hejira. It is an isolated 
spot of light during the long and almost universally 
criminal government (five hundred and twenty -four 
years) of the thirty-seven successive rulers of the 
dynasty of the Abassides. The justice, wisdom, 
clemency, and other monarchical virtues of Ilaroon 
are to this day celebrated in the East, and have 
been perpetuated in many popular tales, particu- 
larly in the Thousand and One Nights : his sway 
extended over a larger area than even that of impe- 
rial Rome in her best days, and was at once the most 
powerful and least guilty despotism the world ever 
saw, comprising in extent the greater part of Asia, 
inhabited Africa, and Southern Europe, and being 
throughout the reign of twenty-three years generally 
peaceful, flourishing, and well governed. 

The Greeks under Irene, having been aggressors, 
were defeated by the young Haroon in his father's 
lifetime ; and the Emperor Nicephorus, who had per- 
fidiously broken treaty, was afterwards routed by him 
with a loss which Greece never recovered. 

The Caliph Alraschid was accounted the most 



208 HAROON ALRASCHID. 

fortunate of men, and a story is told of his recovery of 
a favourite jewel, which recalls in every particular that 
mentioned by Herodotus (Thalia. 41,) as having hap- 
pened to Polycrates of Samos, whose emerald ring 
thrown into the sea by the advice of Amasis, was im- 
mediately recovered through the strange good for- 
tune of having been swallowed by a fish which was 
brought to the royal table. In general, however, it 
may be remarked that the blind goddess is little 
better than the slave of quick perceptive genius, and 
that prosperity must oftener be legitimately attri- 
buted to design than to accident: when a man suc- 
ceeds in whatever he undertakes, the chances are 
immensely in favour of his wisdom. 

And here does any one in the spirit of a Pharisee 
cavil at the admission of Alraschid among our brief 
catalogue ? if the history of his life afford nothing 
to admire in virtue, and the circumstances of his 
station nothing to extenuate in vice, then let the 
author confess the folly of his predilections. But in 
truth, vainly shall we look for his like among Eastern 
despots, ancient or modem, and if we are tolerant 
enough to love excellence even in a Saracen, we 
shall have to search far into the pages of the past 
before we find a better type of Mahometan greatness 
than Haroon Alraschid. 



209 



a iL 4f E ® ®. 

All hail, our own, our ancient peerless boast ! 

From thee thy Britain loves her all to date 

Proud of a king, so wise, so good, so great, 
Who pour'd the liberties we value most 

The sacred rights we chiefly venerate 
In rich abundance round our sea-girt coast : 

Where is thy tomb among us ? where the spot 

Ennobled by some record of thy worth, 
True Father of thy country ? — have we lost 

All love of thee ? hath England then forgot 
Her patriot-prince, her lawgiver, her sage. 

Who taught her, nourished her, and sent her forth 
Rejoicing on her way, from age to age 

Queen of the seas, and Empress of the earth ? 



210 ALFRED. 



To Alfred the Great we owe, as a nation, a debt 
of gratitude incalculable. That illustrious man laid 
the foundations of our home prosperity, and foreign 
glory : of the former, as well by many salutary laws, 
valuable rights, and true liberties, as by the encourage- 
ment of learning and strict dispensation of justice : 
of the latter, by the extension, if not institution of our 
maritime force, and by the consequences of his own 
personal valour. To be more particular, he is said 
to have given us our primal code of statute law, trial 
by jury, and that regular gradation of ranks which is 
the true bulwark of society ; to have translated into 
the tongue of his own people many portions of the 
Bible and other books; to have greatly enlarged, if 
not originally founded, the university of Oxford ; to 
have been eminently the poor man's friend, and yet 
to have paid all honour to his parliament by meeting 
it in council twice a year: to have built a numerous 
navy of the largest size then known, (sixty-oared gal- 
leys,) and to have been actually engaged in fifty-six 
battles fought pro aris et focis. His compositions 
also were numerous and learned ; in his private cha- 
racter he was pious, industrious, and affable; in 
prosperity moderate, in adversity courageous; and 



ALFRED. 211 

briefly, the account which we have of him is full of 
parallels with the history of the royal Psalmist. 

Where is the Country's fitting tribute of respect 
to this great king ? — Why have we no national me- 
morial of our national boast ? Surely, something of 
the sort is due, and has been a debt for ages, were 
it only as an act of homage to the wisdom of our 
ancestors. It might even now have some whole- 
some influence on the degenerate spirit of the age, 
were some of the truer patriots to give to the world 
a succinct account of the excellencies of King 
Alfred, public and private, secular and religious, and 
of the honour we owe to his individual character: 
to go further, and on such grounds, to call upon 
those influential who may still revere his memory, 
to give him a statue in the parliament-house of our 
Great Metropolis. It is a sign of evil in the living 
to forget the virtues of the dead : or is it that, worse 
than forgetting, we think scorn of the great Alfred ? 
that we account ourselves too much in the van of 
learning, to heed the poor attainments of the scholar 
of a thousand years ago ? that we are so tainted 
with the democratic principles, the bitter leaven of 
" Korah and his company," as to confess to no enthu- 
siasm in recalling the honest fame of a truly British 
king } — or is it indeed that none but the rarer spirit 
of a zealous antiquarian can realize these worthies 
of old time as children of yesterday, thinking of the 
past as a watch in the night ? — 



212 



33 a ^ C Of^ 

Thou hast borne many great and noble sons 
Florence the fair, that beauteous as a dream 
Sittest enthroned on Amo's silver stream 
Where coyly thro' the laughing vale it runs, 
And, oh not last, among those gifted ones, 

Memory thine own undying Dante views: 
Him, yet a child, strong love that earliest winds 
Fetters of rose around the purest minds 

Claim'd for his own, and like a monarch gave 
To staid Melpomene, his laurelled muse. 
The happy captive for a favourite slave : 
A slave ? A mighty master, — from whose lyre 

The pangs of hell, the teiTors of the grave. 
The joys of paradise, rush forth in fire ! 



DANTE. 213 



The word dante is a contraction of durante, which 
signifies lasting, and as a name it has contained a 
prophecy. Florence produced this great poet in 
1265 : as a sample of his general precocity, it is said 
he began to love his Beatrice at ten years of age ; 
an affection which seems to have ended only with 
his life: for his after-marriage with Gemma Donati 
was most unhappy, and his poetr\' throughout is full 
of allusions to his first, his early, his only love. The 
works to which he chiefly owes his fame, are the 
Divine dramas, (as he calls them,) Dell' Inferno, del 
Purgatorio, and del Paradiso : probably, Lucian's 
Dialogues of the Dead, and Virgil's sixth ^Eneid fur- 
nished the idea, upon which the genius of Dante has 
built up a most imaginative temple. 

It is a fine coincidence that no epitaph could so 
well express this poet's immortality as his unadorned 
name : Dante in fiveletters tells a tale for immor- 
tality. 

The present is a favourable opportunity for say- 
ing a few^ words on the conventional length of the 
sonnet. It will be seen that the author has in the 
present volume, — though more of a freed-man else- 
where, — adhered throughout to the received number 
of fourteen lines, as well because he perceives a 



214 DANTE. 

harmony in that number, as in deference to the 
popular opinion, which would as soon think of add- 
ing to or taking away from the classic lyre one of its 
strings, or doing the same by the notes of the gamut, 
as of appending or cutting off a line from the exact 
sonnet. However, it will be as well to state, that Dante 
Alighieri, the first authority in these matters, did not 
feel himself under any such necessity ; some of his 
sonnets (not, be it observed, the Canzoni,) reach 
even twenty lines ; below, the writer has rendered 
line for line, one of sixteen : Shakspeare, whose son- 
nets are devoid of the usual involutions, (being in 
fact three stanzas and a final couplet,) has at least 
one of twelve. Still, it must be admitted that these 
are exceptions from a rule which tacit agreement 
seems to have established. 

TO MADONNA. 

Mother of excellence, eternal light. 

Who didst produce that loving fruit for me. 
Which hung in bitter death upon the tree 

To save me from the cavem'd deeps of night, — 

Giver of blessings from those regions bright. 
Pray thou for me to thine all-worthy Son 
That he may guide me to his heavenly throne 

Where governing he sits in gentle might. 

Thou know'st, in thee my trust hath ever stood. 

Thou know'st, in thee my joys did ever lie ; 
Then succour me, thou infinitely Good, 

O succour me for I am like to die 



DANTE. 215 

Hunted to hide perforce in those dread deeps : 
Desert me not, my best of comforters, 
For if on earth a mortal never errs 

The heart repents not, nor the spirit weeps. 

The above idolatrous effusion well illustrates the 
remarks on the sonnet to the Virgin in page 171, 
though scarcely to the extent to be met with else- 
where. The rhymes are arranged as in the original, 
except that they are there all double, and the version 
is as literal as the trammels of rhyme permit ; but 
every body knows that the liquid language of Italy 
flows much more naturally into verse, than any of 
our sluggish northern tongues. Still, we must not so 
loosely surrender our lingual pretensions. However 
musically may glide on the crystal Amo, or the rapid 
Tiber, however softly the rippled waters of Salerno 
may murmur the accents of love, we can still claim 
the deep-flowing stream of sterling eloquence, the 
cataract of power, the lake of placid beauty, the 
babbling brook of merriment : or, to cut cable from 
our inconvenient watery simile, if the Italian beats us 
in volubility of sound, the Briton is his match in well- 
said sense ; the glory of the former is a Carnival 
masquerade, the triumph of the latter, the pulpit, the 
senate, and the bar. 

It was the peculiar praise of Dante, that he was 
the first to elevate his native tongue into a classic by 
writing in the language of modern Italy instead of 
that of ancient Rome, and that his works must be 



216 DANTE. 

considered as the foundation-stone of his country's 
literature. Like the poets and philosophers of old 
time, (always excepting one favourite whom we will 
have the charity not to name, — " relicta non bene 
parmula," — ) Dante was distinguished for his bra- 
very in the field, and his wisdom in the state, as 
well as for literary talent : he lived in most troublous 
times, during the factions between the Guelphs and 
the Ghibelines, and though opposite in politics, was 
in many features of his fate comparable with our 
later Milton. Like Homer too, he is said to have 
composed his Divina Comoedia so much in the cha- 
acter of a homeless wanderer, that many cities, far 
apart, have severally contended for the honour of 
having been the birth-place of that immortal work, m 



217 



O LIBERTY, sweet angel much maligned, 

How have the sons of licence wrong'd thy name,- — 
What crimes, what follies of unhallowed aim 

Have they not cast upon thee, too resigned 
Meek martyr, and their lawless works of shame 

With thine own \^Teath of grand achievement twined ! 
Not thus, yon gallant mountain-patriot, 
Fair Switzerland, the dai'ling of thy fame, 

Caught to his outraged heart the rescued child, 
And, just avenger, spared not, wavered not, 
But with dread patience dared the noble deed. 

On which glad Liberty approving smil'd ; 
For when she saw the savage Austrian bleed 
She knew her own Swiss home, her own Swiss 
children freed. 



218 TELL. 



The greatest profanation of the sacred name of 
Liberty ever committed in the world, was making it 
the watch-word of Revolutionary France. In fact, 
the sons of Belial have so strenuously asserted their 
right to be considered children of light, that the rest 
of mankind, less badly bold, and staggered by the 
enormity of the lie, have almost suspected the ex- 
cellence of liberty altogether. When we hear the 
Canadian rebel, and the Chartist insurgent, dignified 
with the name of patriot, the honest lovers of right 
and order may well disclaim the questionable title. 
So it is with the pagan Hindoos, and the embruted 
slaves, when they are called upon to worship with 
pseudo-christians ; and so with the poor Inca of 
Peru, when he reasonably enough renounced a pro- 
mised heaven, on being told that Spaniards went 
there. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as true 
liberty; and the essence of it consists in the peace- 
ful enjoyment of those rights which are conformable 
to reason ; this, like true religion, is all-worthy of 
its noble army of martyrs. 

The leading facts in the history of William Tell 
are too well known to need repetition ; the dramatist, 
the historian, and the romancist, have amply cele- 



i 



TELL. 219 

brated the great exploit, which issued in the libera- 
tion of Switzerland. 

Mountainous regions have in all ages and 
countries been the spots where patriotism, liber- 
ty, purity, religion, hospitality, and indeed all the 
patriarchal virtues have lingered longest. Our 
own Wales, and Scottish Highlands, northern 
Spain, Switzerland, and the Tyrol, are sufficient 
instances. 

The statistics of crime, if the reader has the op- 
portunity of referring to them, (for here, as in a 
thousand other instances, the writer labours under 
the difficulty of trusting to unassisted memory,) 
will be found to present a verdict most favourable 
to the morals of mountaineers in contradistinction 
to the profligate habits of lowlanders. Of course, 
in such an estimate, equal numbers are taken ; for 
it would be unfair to weigh the guilt of a square 
mile of a populous, because fertile, level, against 
the almost actual innocence of a similar portion 
taken from the thinly-peopled upland. The causes 
which operate favourably on the characters of 
mountaineers, are, chiefly, the necessity for ex- 
ercise, and for greater agricultural exertions; the 
love of home, the features of which are impressed 
on the mind in such picturesque and gigantic 
forms as those of Alps and Apennines ; the con- 
tinual leavening of their inhabitants with the most 
persecuted portions of the church ; the poverty 

L 2 



220 TELL. 

of the neighbourhood ; the constant meteorological 
dangers in which they live ; their seclusion ; and 
the power which grandeur of scenery exerts on the 
mind in disposing it to natural religion. 

Burke said, he would do homage to the crown if 
he saw it hanging on a bush ; and Hermann Gessler 
set up the ducal hat of Austria on a pole, and, in the 
words of Howe's translation of Zschokke, " com- 
manded that every one should honour it by bowing 
as he passed by." But diversity of motive and cir- 
cumstance alike justifies the former, and condemns 
the latter ; the symbol of legitimate right is diame- 
trically opposed to the emblem of usurping wrong : 
the British statesman upheld order and subjection 
with patriotic humility ; the Austrian governor served 
the bad cause of degradation and oppression with fo- 
reign insolence. The saying of Burke is as different 
from the action of Gessler, as the vile character of a 
Wat Tyler, or a Jack Cade is opposed to the noble 
heart of an iirnold or a Tell. 



•221 



I 



Poet, and hermit-scholar of Vaucluse, 

Whom Rome, admiring, forth with laurels sent 
A crowned lover to thy classic muse, — 
That thy rare wisdom could serenely choose 
Nature, and God, and quiet with content. 
Spurning the baubles of ambitious strife 
And wealth sin-tainted of a courtier life 
In palaces of priests unholy spent. 
Honour be thine, and more than mortal fame 
Wreathing with amaranth thy starry name : 
And may that gentle spirit, strangely rent 
By love, alike unguilty and unblest. 
Now with its mate, beyond the breath of blame, 
After a life's short search find everduring rest. 



222 PETRARCH. 



4 



Petrarch flourished so early as the fourteenth cen- 
tury, a fact of which the freshness of his laurels 
makes us forgetful. Through the friendship of King 
Robert of Naples, working on the superstructure of 
exalted merit, he received the purple robe and crown 
of bay in the full senate of Rome, as poet laureate : 
the ceremony was most imposing, and is described 
at length in his life. His mind was stored with 
classical knowledge ; he was in all things far beyond 
the age in which he lived ; he was a good botanist, 
and a general lover of nature, as well as a labourer 
in the mines of art; he is one of the earliest coin- 
collectors on record ; he despised and refused wealth 
and the honours of the papal court, preferring his 
books, and the pretty hermitage at Vaucluse on the 
Sorbia. 

The one great en'or of his life, — an error, never- 
theless, to which he mainly owes his present fame, — 
was a more innocent one than is generally imagined : 
for however warmly he may have regarded his Laura 
in the first hours of their friendship, it is certain 
that their attachment never exceeded the limits of 
propriety. The unhappy marriage of Laura with 
Hugues de Sade was the greatest misfortune to the 
common estimation of Petrarch : but those who will 



PETRARCH. 223 

give themselves the trouble to enquire, will find 
that the conduct of the Platonic lovers was most 
pure, noble, and religious. 

Without professing to attempt an exact transla- 
tion, the writer has appended a few thoughts of 
Petrarch in English verse to show how just and 
generous were his sentiments: the first is to his 
beloved Laura : the next to a young poet, who asked 
him whether it was worth while to persevere in 
working the ungainful soil of Parnassus. 

My Laura, my love, I behold in thine eyes 

Twin daystars that Mercy has given, 
To teach me on earth to be happy and wise 

And guide me triumphant to heaven. 

Their lessons of love thro' a lifetime have taught 

My bosom the pureness of thine. 
They have roused me to virtue, exalted my thought, 

And nerved me for glory divine : 

They have shed on my heart a delightful repose. 
All else it hath barr'd from its portal. 

So deeply the stream of my happiness flows, 
I know that my soul is immortal. 



Sloth, and the sensual mind hath driven away 
All virtues from the world : where'er I range 
I note on every side a wicked change ; 

Our steps are now unlit by heavenly ray : 



2*24 PETRARCH. 

The poet, walking in his crown of bay, 
Is pointed at — for scorn ; the selfish herds 

Of mammon-worshippers insulting say 

" Where is the gain in all these metred words ? 
Your crowns of bay and myrtle are but leaves." 

And so philosophy goes starv'd and lone, 
And Vice is glad, while widowed Virtue grieves. 

Still be not thou disheartened, generous one. 
Follow that path, which entered ne'er deceives. 

But leads if not to earth's, to heaven's throne. 

After all then, according to the complaint of 
Petrarch, we of the nineteenth century are not 
so poetically degenerate as is commonly supposed, 
for as little in his age, as in our's, could Horace 
have written with any truth his " Quem tu Mel- 
pomene:" nay, it is a great question whether he 
could have done so even in his own Augustan era, 
had he not been a favourite courtier, as well as the 
Muses' worshipper; the fashion set by a royal 
patron gives immediate fame, but, unless it be really 
deserved, time will strip the daw of his feathers : 
King Robert, and Emperor Octavian, could not have 
handed down their laureates to admiring after-ages, 
if Petrarch and Horace had not been in themselves 
legitimate monarchs of the lyre, paragons of poetrj-' 
and learning, true swans of Helicon, bom with music 
in their souls. Time is the great arbiter of literary- 
rights ; its discriminating stream, drowning thousands 
in oblivion, carries on the one or two, and throws 



PETRARCH. 225 

them forth upon the shore of immortality ; the whirl- 
pools of that river overwhelm all things but the 
buoyancy of real talent; true bread cast upon its 
waters is found after many days : and although post- 
humous fame be not reducible to money's-worth, the 
man must have sunk very far into the slough of 
worldliness, who can account the wages paid by pos- 
terity to excellence, as poor and valueless amends 
for the meanness of their ancestors. The spirit of 
Milton, if yet it wots of earthly fame, has been long 
since richly compensated for the insult put upon the 
travail of his genius in that Paradise Lost was sold by 
him, when living, for ten pounds ! The estimate of 
cotemporaries may be thirty pieces of silver, but of 
those who come after, uncounted gold. The children 
of those who slew the prophets, build the prophets' 
tombs. 



L 5 



226 



Thy soul was nerved with more than mortal force, 
Bold mariner upon a chartless sea, 
With none to second, none to solace thee. 
Alone, who daredst keep thy resolute course 

Thro' the broad waste of waters, drear and dark. 
Mid wrathful skies, and howling winds, and worse 
The prayer, the taunt, the threat, the muttered curse 

Of all thy brethren in that fragile bark : 
For on thy brow, throbbing with hopes immense, 

Had just ambition set his royal mark. 
Enriching thee with noble confidence 

That having once thy venturous sails unfurl'd 
No danger should defeat thy recompense 
The god-like gift to man of half a world. 



COLUMBUS. 227 



In all the eventful history of Columbus, no inci- 
dent gives a thinking man so exalted an idea of his 
character, as that alluded to in the sonnet. The 
constancy of his determination still to hold on, in 
spite equally of the urgent entreaties and mutinous 
threats of all his followers, (who even suggested the ex- 
tremity of throwing him overboard,) was truly heroic : 
and when land at last appeared, and the toil-worn 
voyagers fell down to worship him as their deliverer, 
the picture of true greatness was complete. 

Whether or not Columbus was the first discoverer 
of the Western continent has been much questioned: 
Martin Behem of Nuremberg distinctly claims the 
priority, while Americus Vesputius has boldly 
thieved the laurels of another, and called that great 
country by his own name. It would appear that 
Behem discovered the Brazils in 1484 : that Colum- 
bus visited the main land in 1 498 ; and that Ameri- 
cus named it after himself in 1507. One praise, at 
any rate, is due to Columbus above the rest; he 
reached the new world by the mere force of his 
mind : he was indebted to no accidental current or 
friendly storm ; but he set forth scientifically to 
work out a geographical problem, and triumphantly 
proved the theory invented by his genius.— 



2*28 COLUMBUS. 

With respect to the new world, it should be 
added, that there had from remote antiquity ex- 
isted a tradition, of which both Plato and Aristotle 
were aware, that some great and powerful nations 
lived and flourished in the regions of the setting 
sun. These, from their architectural remains are 
now known to have been the ancient inhabitants 
of Mexico, and Peru, and it is remarkable that 
many customs, as that of embalming, building pyra- 
mids, the use of hieroglyphics, the shape of drink- 
ing vessels, &c., are common both to those old occi- 
dentals, and to the great and ingenious Egyptians. 
It appears to the writer very possible, that some 
Phoenician navigators may in very early times have 
got accidentally into the influence of a fortunate 
monsoon, and so have been wafted to America: 
and this idea would account as well for the original 
colonization of that continent, as for the excellence 
in art, and coincidences in language, (for example 
the name of God, Jehao,) known to have existed 
among those who have been falsely called the 
Aborigines of the far West. This notion is far 
more probable than that the rude Esquimaux by 
descending to the tropics became quickly meta- 
morphosed into the courtly Peruvian, or that the 
civilized sons of Europe and Asia would be at the 
pains to foot it over " thrilling regions of thick- 
ribbed ice" in the desperate hope of coming some 
distant morrow '' to fresh fields and pastures fair." 
Albeit Horace (whose works, like those of our 



COLUMBUS. 229 

Shakspeare are of universal application,) maligns 
Ocean as " dissociabilis," it has ever been the main 
road for human enterprise; and however the infidel, 
rejecting Moses, may demand separate creations for 
America and Australia, we can point to the winds 
and the waves, and tell him without controversy, 
" All men are brethren." 

Surrounded by the appliances of modem navigation, 
we are but incompetent judges either of the courage 
of Columbus, or of the dangers that he dared. The 
barks in which he ventured across the trackless deep 
were little better than river barges, and his trembling 
crews looked to him alone for skill, encouragement, 
and pilotage. They rejoiced in nothing so much as 
contrary winds, in that they were thereby hindered 
from placing greater distance between themselves 
and Spain, and dreaded nothing more than their ar- 
rival at what they imagined to be the desert sandy- 
edge, or precipitous rocky-rim of the ocean, — the 
world's end. But Columbus was bom to succeed : 
and though royal jealousy stripped him of j^ower 
and wealth, and envy has been fierce against his 
fame, with more justice than an Ennius he may boast 
Volito vivu' per ora virum ; with more truth than re- 
garded a Voltaire, his self-made epitaph should run, 
'• Mon esprit est partout," and the New World for a 
memorial, " Mon coeur est ici." 



230 



3a a #4f a e E E e. 

Ho ! — thou that hither com'st, in gorgeous stole 
Of many-coloured silk, — and round thy head 
The rainbow hues of fancy richly shed, — 

And eyes that in ecstatic transport roll, — 

And looks that speak the triumph of the soul, — 
Hail, young creative spirit ! from whose mind 

Teeming tumultuously with thoughts and things, 
(The flitting notion with strong power combin'd 

Of fixing all those gi'and imaginings,) 

An intellectual world of wonder springs : 
Raffaelle, thine all too perishable art 

Fades from the time-stain'd walls ; but not so fade 
Our memories of thy skill ; — those laurels start 

Afresh for ever : walk thou in their shade. 



RAFFAELLE. 231 



To Raffaelle Sanzio, of Urbino, is usually con- 
ceded the palm among painters. He was well 
brought up to his art under various masters, owing to 
the judicious discernment of his abilities by his 
father, John Sanzio. His chief works consist of 
numerous frescoes of subjects scriptural and allegori- 
cal which decorate the stanzas of the Vatican, many 
inimitable portraits of Madonnas, saints, and cele- 
brated characters, (amongst whom are conspicuous 
the unhappy Beatrice Cenci, and the lovely Foma- 
rina,) the " Transfiguration," which, though un- 
finished is accounted the great masterpiece of paint- 
ing, and those splendid patterns for tapestry, known 
as the Cartoons, the major part of which are now 
at Hampton Corn-t. In fact, so numberless are the 
works attributed to this artist, that when we con- 
sider the few years he laboured, and the multiplicity 
of his other engagements, we shall see reason to 
conclude, that many of them were executed by his 
talented Roman school of pupils : for example, there 
exist severally, in Florence, Vienna, Darmstadt, 
Paris, and London, counterpart pictures of a St. John 
in the desert ; and they are all so excellent, and so 
similar, that no one of them has yet been decided 



232 RAFFAELLE. 

to be the original, although it is certain that one 
must be entitled to that honour. 

Raffaelle was an architect, and a sculptor, as well 
as a painter: many parts of St. Peter's, the Caffar- 
elli Palace, and other fine buildings at Rome, were 
erected from his designs and under his superin- 
tendence, and in one of the churches there is still 
shown a Jonah said to be the work of his chisel. 

In person, Raffaelle had a most winning beauty, 
and his character was consistent with so angelic an 
exterior. — He died in 1520, aged only thirty -seven, 
and was buried with extraordinary splendour : his 
life was one scene of incessant triumph, and his 
death was honoured with imperial obsequies. 

The subject of painting is a theme that might ex- 
tend to volumes. Here, however, we must limit 
ourselves to the meagre allowance of one remark. 
There is an infinite difference between the merely 
mechanical art of imitating objects presented to the 
eye, and the intellectual power of embodying pic- 
tures conceived by the mind ; between the Chinese 
accuracy of a good copier, and the vague strength of 
a great designer : shall we instance Rembrandt, Rey- 
nolds, and Bonnington, as opposed to the ' politus 
ad unguem' school of many of the Dutch and Flemish 
masters ? — allusions to living names should always be 
avoided, or it would be possible to give some re- 
markable illustrations of this distinction : the power 
of forming grand ideal scenes appears to have been 



RAFFAELLE. 233 

a more common attribute of the ancient schools, than 
it is (with some splendid exceptions,) of the modem ; 
and the laborious study of a " pattern biscuit," — 
verbum sapienti, — is certainly not quite so character- 
istic of prolific and exalted genius, as the original 
design for the famous Madonna and child, which 
was sketched by Raffaelle in the public street on the 
head of a wine-tub. A good marine painter is al- 
most necessarily more a man of mind, than the servile 
imitator of still life ; flowers, fruits, lay figures, and 
models of interiors can wait till every line has been 
copied, but a storm at sea must be transferred to 
canvas from the strong efforts of memory or imagina- 
tion. In like manner, the well-known rapidity of 
Raffaelle furnishes an additional proof of his high 
genius: his habit was, to compose the whole subject 
in his mind at once, and then to strike off bodily the 
harmonious design. What an intellect must that 
have been, which could conceive at a heat such 
complicated scenes as the Disputa, or the School of 
Athens : how great the artistic skill that could give 
tangible being to such powerful conceptions ! 



234 



The clarion sounds, — the steeds impatient prance 

While featly spurring to the mimic fray 
The high-bom chivalry of gallant France 
Poise the stout shield, and break the quivering lance ;- 

— And who this beai'dless champion of to-day r 
The young Bayard ; than whom no brighter name 
Shines in more blazon on the rolls of fame, 

The fearless, and the spotless, — nobly hailed. 
All honour to the brave ! — Alone he stood 
With single sword against the multitude 

At Gargliano ; and when fortune failed. 

Generous Bayard alone knew not to jield, — 
But full of glories, — gentle, brave, and good. 

He died in pray'r, though on the battle-field. 



BAYARD. 235 



We are grown too regardless of high honour, deli- 
cate courtesy, and the right gallantry of a chival- 
rous spirit, we have drank too deeply the^ freezing 
waters of materialism, seriously to contemplate with 
rational approbation such a character as Bayard. 
Napoleon was not far from the truth, when he stig- 
matized us, as a nation of shopkeepers : for all things, 
even matters mental, are valued at the auction-esti- 
mate of what they will fetch, and Hudibras's notion 
of oaths and honour has lost the humour of its irony 
by having grown fashionable. Still, there are among 
us a noble band, that have not succumbed to the 
modem Baal, and with these a very brief mention of 
the virtues that distinguished "le bon chevalier, sans 
peur et sans reproche," will serve to dispel prejudice 
against the model of soldiership, and mirror of 
honour. 

The Rev. G. Gleig, ever shrewd and tolerant, in 
vol. ii. p. 42 of his entertaining visit to Germany, 
observes, " Let us not, even when standing in the 
dungeon of a baron's hold, come to the conclusion, 
that what we call the dark ages were ages of un- 
mitigated wrong. They might produce their tyrants 
and oppressors, whose power, in proportion as it 
was resistless, would spread misery around; but 



236 BAYARD. 

they produced also their vindicators of the oppressed ; 
their Bayards and Lancelots, of whose spirit of can- 
dour, and fair and open and honourable dealing, it 
might be well if this our intellectual and utilitarian 
age had inherited even a portion." — Pierre de Bay- 
ard is said by his biographers, especially Godefroy 
and Brantome, to have been " a tender lover, a firm 
friend ; in privacy simple and pious, in public mag- 
nanimous, modest, and noble ;" — ever the soul of hon- 
our, the heart of humanity ; more than Ney, le plus 
brave des braves, and not less than Sidney, the para- 
gon of knighthood. Though highborn and high- 
bred, in his own time of a fame greater than that of 
princes, and of an influence more than that of mi- 
nisters, he never accepted office or dignity beyond 
that of being a simple chevalier ; he was no courtier ; 
so fearlessly honest, as to tell the truth sans peur, so 
blamelessly bold, as to do the right sans reproche. 
For military exploits, at thirteen he was an accom- 
plished horseman, at eighteen, won the prize of the 
tournament against the flower of France's chivalry, 
at nineteen took a standard on the field of Verona : 
in the battle of Milan, he pursued the enemy with 
such desperate bravery that he, a second Coriolanus, 
was shut in with the fugitives, alone among his foes ; 
and on that occasion, Ludovico Sforza, who took 
him prisoner, generously dismissed him without ran- 
som, and returned him his arms, and his horse : in 
the battle of Fomovo he had two horses killed under 
him ; was dangerously wounded at Brescia, where he 



BAYARD. 237 

proved himself as magnammous as he was brave by 
refusing a large ransom offered him by a Spanish 
captive, to whose family the chevalier was under ob- 
ligation : at the bridge of Gargliano, he fought li- 
terally single-handed for half an hour against two 
hundred Spaniards, and thereby covered the retreat 
of his own troops, while he emulated Horatius CocJes 
in the exploit : after the battle of Marignano, Fran- 
cis the First, astonished at the deeds of Bayard, in- 
sisted on receiving knighthood at his hand, and at 
Mezieres with only a thousand men the chevalier 
successfully resisted thirty-five thousand. To con- 
clude, he died as he had lived, fulfilling the eulogy of 
Solon on the happy man ; full of honours, on the 
battle-field where his ancestors for many generations 
had bled before him, with his face to the coming foe 
who humanely pitched a tent over the wounded 
hero, he " commended his soul to God, his life to 
his country," and so, like a soldier and a Christian, 
died Bayard. 



238 



a: ® c 5^ e ». 

CouLDST thou look down upon us from thy rest, 
Where'er thy spirit hath its glorious home, 
And note that persecuting horn of Rome 
Waxing in subtle pow'r and pride unblest, 

How would thy zeal flame out, thou second Paul 
Thy spurious children, who should still protest 

Against a church apostate and impure 
Now bid her prosper, and insanely call 
The pampering of priestcraft, liberal ! 

Liberal, — to help in forging more secure 
Chains for the conscience, fetters for the mind ; 

Liberal, — to quench our light in utter dark ! 
But prophecy hath told it : search and find : 
Cursed is he that shall receive the mark. 



LUTHER. 239 



B No sign of our times is in a national point of view 
more fearful than the resuiTection of popery. The 
students of Daniel and the Apocalypse have long 
looked for it, and now that it appears, entertain the 
most just apprehension of accompanying judgments ; 
and the enlightened statesman, who is versed in the 
politics of the world,knows well that the influence of 
the papacy is one most blighting to a country. Not 
to look nearer our own shores, witness the contrast 
afforded respectively by the Protestant and Popish 
cantons of Switzerland. Other second causes are in- 
deed in operation, but they emanate indirectly from 
one root : and the disciple of Luther, whose school 
is not yet quite empty, still learns to look for the 
vengeance of Almighty God upon presumption and 
idolatry. 

Luther is a ^ second Paul,' not merely in character 
and conduct, but more remarkably perhaps from the 
mode of his conversion. It happened to him while 
yet a youth, at Erfurt, (about A. D. 1500,) that in the 
course of a country walk with a friend, a thunder- 
storm came on, and a flash of lightning struck Luther 
senseless : his companion was killed at his side ; and the 
circumstance made a religious impression upon " the 
other that was left," never afterwards to be effaced. 



240 LUTHER. 

The life of this most eminent servant of God, who, 
in his single person carried on for years the conflict 
of truth, is too replete with important incident to be 
briefly condensed in this place. It is a matter of 
Christian education, if not of Protestant duty, to pe- 
ruse it in full ; and very few of those, who, for their 
own advantage, are here called upon to do so, can 
have to urge a lack of opportunity : every manual of 
biography includes a life of Luther, at a far greater 
length than is here expedient. SuflSce it to say, that 
but for the miner's son, w^ho unassisted, save by 
Heaven, in the true spirit of an apostle, before kings 
and rulers preached truth to a world drowned in error, 
but for him, who alone braved the vengeance of the 
mighty, and demolished the bulwarks of ignorance, 
but for his zeal, talents, energy, and wisdom, but for 
Martin Luther (under Providence,) England might 
still be groaning under spiritual tyranny, the depen- 
dent province of a foreign despot, filed with the 
agents of the murderous inquisition, and in every 
feature, social and private, covered with the plague- 
spots of Popery. 



241 



So young, so fair, so simple, so deceived ! — 
For all thy learning could not teach thee guile. 
Nor warn thee from that base domestic wile 

Which coil'd thee like a serpent, and bereaved 
Thy heart of life, of loyal praise thy name. 
Posterity ^6• just; and from the blame 

Of stealing for thyself another's crown 
And playing false in hot ambition's game 

Declares thee innocent : that little week 

Of splendour forced and fear'd, so soon laid down. 
Cost thee most bitter wages ; — yet most sweet, 

If prison-haunting wisdom bade thee seek 

This heav'nly crown, for thy fair brow so meet, 
This higher majesty my song would greet. 



M 



242 JANE GREY. 



It is possible, that a misdirected zeal for religion, 
and not mere worldly ambition, actuated Suffolk and 
Northumberland in their well-known attempt to setup 
Jane as Protestant Queen, in opposition to the Papist 
Mary. It was at their instigation that Edward the 
Sixth on his death-bed, doubtless in fear for the pro- 
spects of his kingdom, signed the nev7 deed of suc- 
cession, and they, in conjunction with the king's 
privy council, after a few days' concealment of the 
demise of the crown, on the 9th of July, 1553, pro- 
claimed " Jane, the Queue." But the zeal, or ambi- 
tion, of the two dukes was all in vain, as those must 
ever find, who do evil to compass 'good; nine brief 
days of a sovereignty within the Tower-walls was all 
their harvest of Protestant ascendency, all their gain 
of selfish aggrandizement, and those who committed 
treason against legitimacy perished on the scaffold, 
even in the life-time of Jane and Guilford Dudley, 
their innocent and misguided victims. 

We have sufficient evidence that the fatal crown 
was forced most unwillingly upon Lady Jane Grey, 
from her last pathetic letter to her father, — " Wash- 
ing my hands with the innocence of my fact, my 
guiltless bloud shall cry before the Lord, Mercie to 
the innocent ! and yet though I must needs acknow- 



JANE GREY. 243 

ledge, that being constrayned, and (as you know well 
enough) continually assayed; yet, in taking upon 
mee, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously 
oflfended the queue and her lawes ;" and again, 
in her speech on the scaffold, " I consented to the 
thing I was enforced unto, constraint making the 
law believe I did that which I never understood ;" 
again, " If my fault deserved punishment, my youth 
at least, and my imprudence, were worthy of excuse. 
God and posterity will show me favour." 

In fine, the king commanded, a father enjoined, 
a near of kin persuaded, and the whole privy council 
of nobles, lawyers, and hierarchs, counselled and 
sanctioned her assumption of the crown : and how- 
ever futile her right to the throne in a question of 
hereditary succession, however criminal was her gen- 
tle usurpation, still mankind has always cried shame 
on the tyranny which spared not a fair girl of seven- 
teen, but committed her to the scaffold, more for he- 
resy than treason, by the hands of her bigoted and 
cruel relative. Queen Mary. 

The accomplishments and truly Christian virtues 
of Jane Grey, are well known : we are told by Strype, 
Chaloner, Ascham, Fuller, and others, that she could 
speak Latin and Greek fluently ; was well versed in 
Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French, and Italian ; and 
was familiar with instrumental music, and other usual 
feminine accomplishments : that she had the inno- 
cency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the birth of a 
princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, 

m2 



244 JANE GREY. 

and the death of a malefactor for her parent's of- 
fences. Aristotle's praise of women was said to have 
been perfected in her ; and her writings when in pri- 
son prove her to have added the resignation of a 
martyr, and the constancy of a heroine, to the faith 
and " duty of a Christian." 



245 



Who shall appraise Potosi's hidden mines, 
; Or measure Oronooko's gushing springs, 
Or in a balance weigh the Apennines, 

Fathom the deep, or span the polar rings ? — 
And who can sum thy wealth, exhaustless mind, 

Or scale the heights of its imaginings 
Where giant thoughts with beauteous fancies twin'd, 

Stand wondrous, as the heaven-kissing hills ? 
Thy theme is Man : the universal heart 

In sympathy with thee dissolves or thrills, 
While the strong spells of nature leagued with art 

Bind the world captive in a magic chain : 

Thy peer is not yet born ; our hope is vain, — 

We may not look upon thy like again. 



246 SHAKSPEARE. 



It were a work of supererogation to preach to Eng- 
lishmen on the text, William Shakspeare. Yet, be it 
only for the sake of uniformity , something is expected 
to be said, although unqualified praises pall upon 
the wearied spirit. Much of Shakspeare's hidden 
excellence, to be rightly appreciated, demands more 
than a superficial perusal ; his innate knowledge of 
morals and humanity is incalculable: as an obiter 
example, let the attention be directed to the deep 
philosophy of that scene in the Tempest, where the 
savage, the drunkard, and the fool are found mingled 
up in a fraternal friendship, and where the blind sin- 
cerity of an untaught Caliban worships for wine the 
knavish hypocrisy of a drunken Stephano ; a rare 
commentary on the degrading influence of social 
vices and follies, and on the true character of Gentile 
idolatry. There is more than mere amusement in 
these things. Take again the contrast afforded in 
the different appreciations of the ten'ors of death by 
the humorous grave-digger, hardened only by habit, 
and the contemplative prince, softened by misfortune ; 
between the merry but unfeeling " A mad rogue ! 'a 
poured a flagon o' Rhenish on my head once," — and the 
true pathos of" Alas ! poorYorick." An hundred other 
instances will readily occur to the habitual student of 



SHAKSPEARE. 247 

our great dramatist : the writer, " parcus theatri cul- 
tor et infrequens," labours under the disadvantage of 
knowing more of Shakspeare in the closet than on 
the stage ; and an intelligent actor or spectator will 
find himself probably more able to sound the depths 
of Shakspeare than a mere private reader ; the illu- 
sion of the scene and clever byeplay stand in more 
stead than book-learning, in order to comprehend 
the heart of ' Fancy's child.' 

One is apprehensive of saying any thing about an 
author, on whom so much has been written, for fear 
of stumbling unawares on the remark of some other 
scribe, and so falling into the hands of the Philis- 
tines, on a charge of plagiarism ; (indeed this remark 
is of almost universal application:) otherwise, we 
might hazard a mention of the great inequalities of 
Shakspeare, — nihil unquam sic dispar sibi ; nay, of 
his occasional mediocrity, — Indignor, quandoque 
bonus dormitat Homerus : we might also burst out 
into ecstatic praise of passages in which he has mas- 
tered passion, and exhausted poetry. But these 
things have been done so often, that the reader \W11 
be thankful to be left alone with his Shakspearian 
meditations. 



248 



If to have been wise Europe's pioneer 

To truth, and sense, and better aims of life, — 

If by thy satire's keen and caustic knife 
To have had Ercles' might to lop and sear 

The stolid hydra-heads of errant strife. 
If these be worth a passing grateful thought. 

Take it, Cervantes ; we have few like thee 
Full of right-minded wit, that wounds not aught 

But folly, with its cutting gaiety : 
Thanks to thy prison, that its dullness wrought 

A lasting humorous good ; the crazy knight, 
His shrewd rough squire, and those unheard-of deeds. 

Whereat the schoolboy shouts with huge delight. 
And the philosopher wonders as he reads. 



CERVANTES. 249 



^H The monstrous notion of knighterrantry was still 
^rtourishing in Spain, when Cervantes Saavedra pub- 
lished Don Quixote, A. D. 1608, in the sixtieth year 
of his age. This work, more than any other, as well 
from its intrinsic merits, as from its entire suitability 
to the genius of the people to whom it is addressed, 
redeemed from the follies of adventurous heroism 
the romantic Spaniards. Cervantes published also 
thirty- eight dramas, many poems, and fourteen short 
novels, second only to Boccacio's, but all his genius 
could not raise his condition above its original po- 
verty. He was never out of want, though he saw 
the various fates of a brave soldier, a successful 
dramatist, a secluded poet, an Algerine slave, and a 
writer famous throughout Europe : for lack of occu- 
pation, rather than hope of gain, he composed Don 
Quixote in a debtors' prison at Seville, reaped from 
it no advantage, was persecuted for his good fame, 
lived a humble dependent on a patron, the Comte de 
Lemos, dropped out of life unobserved, and was 
buried at IVIadrid in his sixty-eighth year, without 
the least mark of respect, and reposes there even 
now unhonoured by a common tombstone to his 
memory. Like Chatterton he lived most poor, like 
Bunyan, and Raleigh, wrote as a captive, like Ot- 

M 5 



250 CERVANTES. 

way died destitute, and like Butler, (till forty years 
after death, — when Alderman Barber furnished the 
monument in Westminster Abbey,) — was thrown 
into the earth without the common Hie jacet. Such 
is the fortune of genius. 

It would seem indeed that Schiller's poem on the 
partition of the earth is little short of being seri- 
ously true, for even when such a master-hand as 
that of " the wizard of the North" has had power 
to turn all it touched into gold, and has reaped the 
well-earned harvest of affluence, misfortune sweeps 
away the temporal treasm'e and leaves the poet bare. 
It would seem that, with far too even-handed jus- 
tice, the world is content enough to give the wages 
of renown for the labours of intellect, repaying the 
pleasure which it experiences from a Scott, a Bums, 
or a Cervantes, with the pleasure it communicates 
by fame and approbation. The man whose writings 
have enlarged the mind, gladdened the heart, and 
cheered the day of sorrow, as only known spiritually, 
is apportioned a spiritual sustenance. Alexander, 
who never slept without a copy of Homer under 
his pillow, might have grudged an obolus to the 
mendicant bard ; and the great nation, which owes 
the major part of its literary glories to Miguel de 
Cerv^antes, in death, as in life, have rewarded him 
with nothing but his fame. 



251 



s a aa w e 1^, 

The life which is the blood : O heedless men, 
How often unbelieving have ye heard 
The side-dropp'd hints, that strew the written Word ; 
The fountain-heart, that pours the stream of life ; 
The circling wheel that sends it back agen 
By vessels manifold ; ye might have learned 
From the fool's scorn, a guide that never err'd, 
Without the clumsier aid of scalpel-knife, 

These truths for ages, had ye but discerned 
The book of God with natural wisdom rife : 
Still, Harvey, be thy patient genius praised, 
The shrewdness of thy well-digested plan. 
Whose hand the strangely-woven curtain raised 
That veil the mysteries of life from man. 



252 HARVEY. 



Bishop Butler, in the Analogy, (memoriter laudo,) 
says, " if ever new discoveries are made, they will 
be made by men of talent following up obscure 
hints derived from some other quarter than the sug- 
gestion of their own minds." In fact, it is open to 
demonstration, that all truth of all kinds has ori- 
ginated from the mind of the Supreme Being, and 
has come down to us either by written or tradi- 
tionary revelation. It is man's prerogative to im- 
prove, but he cannot create : the phrase invention is 
much more accurate than that of originality. These 
remarks are in some small degree illustrative of the 
fact, strange but true, that notwithstanding the distinct 
assertions of the vitality of the blood contained in 
the writings of Moses — Genesis, ix. 4, and the pa- 
rallel passages — " Flesh with the life thereof, which 
is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat, — " and the 
just images in which Solomon has riddled the cir- 
culation of the blood in Ecclesiastes, (see also the 
sonnet to Hippocrates, p. 109 ante,) for even thousands 
of years these truths have remained unknown. It 
was not until the time of Harvey in the seventeenth, 
and Hunter in the eighteenth centuries, that physi- 
cal demonstrations induced men to conceive them- 
selves authorized to believe the Bible on these 



HARVEY. 253 

points. The questions of geology and other sci- 
ences will no doubt prove to be strictly analogous. 

The book of Job, for example, is full of natural 
philosophy: refer to eh. xxvi. 7, "He stretcheth 
out the north over the empty space, and hangeth 
the earth upon nothing;" where a deep mind will 
discern an intimation of magnetism : also ch. xxxviii. 
vv. 25, 26, where, as in many similar passages, there 
is a hint of electricity : and many others. Also in 
Gen. i. 7, we are told of a circumfluence of waters 
above the firmament, a circumstance antecedently 
probable ; and in several places, of central fire, and 
(compared with Gen. vii. 11,) of superincumbent 
compressed waters, — which would reconcile both 
the Vulcanian and Neptunian theories, (the ancient 
ecpyroses and cataclysms of the Stoics, adopted in 
the theories of Hutton, Werner, Lamarck and others,) 
which may readily coexist. Astronomy and cosmo- 
gony are often alluded to, and nothing has been yet 
discovered which is inconsistent with the Pentateuch 
and book of Job. The above are merely passing in- 
stances of the natural philosophy of the Scriptures, 
and are of the " deep things," which the scoffing 
mind will never arrive at. To faith alone are they 
addressed : and a teachable mind will see more in 
them than meets the eye. 

The plan of Harvey alluded to in the sonnet, was 
to dissect and lay out flat upon a board the principal 
vessels of the body, by means of which he arrived at 
the fact that the stream of existence moves in a circle. 



54 HARVEY. 

TheCoUege of Physicians in London still possesses 
some of these tablets, illustrative of life, which are the 
works of Harvey, who, among his many other merits, 
deserves, as well for liberality as for talent, to be ac- 
counted the father of that learned institution. He 
built for the College a combination-room, a museum, 
and a library, and justly accounting that a legacy is 
no gift, made over to it in his lifetime the whole of 
his paternal estate. It is right to add that Harvey 
had no children, and that he wronged no one by 
that act of generosity. 



255 



WooTTON, fair Wootton, thine ancestral Hall, 

Thy green fresh meadows, cours'd by ductile streams, 
That ripple joyous in the noonday beams. 

Leaping adown the frequent waterfall. 

Thy princely forest, and calm-slumbering lake 

Are hallowed spots and classic precincts all ; 

For in thy terraced walks, and beechen grove 
The gentle generous Evelyn wont to rove. 
Peace-lover, who of Nature's garden spake 

From cedars to the hyssop on the wall : 
O righteous spirit, falVn on evil times. 

Thy loyal zeal, and learned piety 

Blest all around thee, wept thy country's crimes, 

And taught the world how Christians live and die. 



256 EVELYN. 



A more admirable character than that of John 
Evelyn is not readily to be met with. Religion, 
patriotism and universal benevolence were the Lares 
and Penates of his home. Bom and bred in an age 
hypocritical or enthusiastic, Evelyn preserved the 
quiet tenor of his way as a pious and persecuted 
Churchman : a devoted royalist, he inveighed with 
indignant grief against " the execrable villains who 
murdered our excellent king ;" he resisted taking the 
oath of allegiance to Cromwell at the hazard of his 
life ; his peaceful rustic works, especially the Sylva, 
have been of such infinite advantage to his country, 
that D'Israeli does not scruple to say, " Inquire at 
the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been con- 
structed, and they can tell you that it was with the 
oaks planted by the genius of Evelyn :" though sorely 
tried by the loss of seven fair children out of eight, 
two of whom were prodigies of excellence and pre- 
cocious learning, his Diary proves him to have con- 
quered his griefs, and bowed in humble confidence 
to the merciful will of his Creator : he lived con- 
sistent, respected and beloved, and went to the re- 
ward of a faithful servant of God at the advanced 
age of eighty-six. 

The moral of his epitaph is worth recording, from 



EVELYN. 257 

its truth ; " All is vanity which is not honest, and 
there is no solid wisdom but in true piety " He 
lies buried at Wootton in Surrey, a beautiful spot, 
which had long been the seat of his ancestors. 

In allusion to the " hyssop," it is proper to men- 
tion that Evelyn condescended to a ^ Discourse on 
Salads,' after his great works Sylva, Pomona, and 
the Kalendarium. 

The most cursory record of Evelyn's worth ought 
to include a brief notice of Mrs. Evelyn, one of the 
most admirable of women, " the queen of marriage, 
a most perfect wife." Throughout the fearful social 
and domestic trials of public anarchy, bloody re- 
volution, general pestilence, and the prevalent 
fatality of smallpox in her own family circle, she 
was never seen otherwise than courageous, resigned, 
pious, high-minded, and gentle : and such being 
the qualities of her mind, the accidents of her 
earthly state included beauty, wit, wealth, rank, and 
learning. How fair a crowTi to the honours of a 
husband, who " sat among the elders of the land:" 
how rich " a treasure above rubies," to him who 
could truly " call her blessed." 



258 



O LIGHT, denied to him, that thou art mine ! 

O blessed Sun, that I can joy in thee ! 

To praise the Love, — alas so lost on me, — 
How gladly should I pour the hymn divine : 

Yet all unlike this glorious blind old man 
Mine inward eyes with no such radiance shine ; 
How seldom in that better sun I bask 

How fainly would I, yet how faintly can : 
Great Giver, might I unpresumptuous ask 
Into my heart thy love its light to pour. 

Take all instead thy righteous mercy wilt ; 
Not so, for Thou art God : give this, give more, 

The richest glory to the poorest guilt. 
So with thy Milton shall my soul adore. 



MILTON. 259 



There is little need to inform the reader of the ca- 
lamity under which Milton laboured ; a calamity to 
which, by way of vicarious retribution, the world 
owes so deep a debt of poetry. But dreadful as 
blindness may be, and however " dear be the light 
that visits" the glad eyes, it must be accounted no 
slender compensation, and worth at least one of the 
twain, to have been the author of that splendid invo- 
cation to light and those touching allusions to blind- 
ness, which open the third book of Paradise Lost. 
At least, if Scaliger in an ecstacy of admiration for 
two odes of Horace, (the * Donee gratus eram tibi,' 
and the ^ Quem tu Melpomene, semel,') declares he 
would rather have written them, than have been a 
mighty monarch, — " vel totius Tarraconensis rex," 
the enthusiasm of Britons for their Milton may be well 
excused. 

Our immortal poet, who divides the homage of the 
world with few compeers, and perhaps in sublimity 
of imagination and general vigour of miud is second 
to no man, developed the resources of his genius in 
very early youth. His classical reading and univer- 
sal knowledge are everywhere apparent, and many of 
those Latin poems, which were his tasks at school, 
deserve to take rank beside the elegiacs of Ovid or 



260 MILTON. 

Tibullus. The " Comus," and the " Lycidas," were, 
however, the first great triumphs of Milton's poetry, 
and these with his minor works would have been 
enough for fame: at least, Gray occupies a niche 
in the temple of immortality on claims much less 
beautiful and voluminous ; at twenty-five, and fifty- 
five respectively, each had to show to the world a 
cabinet of gems, few indeed, but of the first water. 
But Milton was destined for so much more, that, in 
comparison, nothing was then achieved ; he had but 
just seen the outer court of that house of praise which 
men were to build to his memory. For years, vext 
by political intrigue, domestic discords, and the un- 
grateful labours of the school-room, his poetical 
powers seemed to be dormant, or the great light 
within him was evidenced only by casual scintilla- 
tions. But the finger of misfortune then came on 
him for good ; to broken health, disappointed hopes, 
and shattered spirits, was added at a stroke the cala- 
mity of blindness: and thus forced into necessary re- 
tirement and contemplation, his mind began to imagine 
and create new worlds to repay itself for that which his 
outward eye had lost. So, in the sear autumn of his 
life, the most wonderful work ever composed by man 
rose unpremeditated to the dictating tongue of Mil- 
ton, even as his own descriptions of supernal and 
infernal architecture, which framed itself complete in 
sublime and dreamy grandeur. Unlike other poets, 
whose excellence is often attributable to the " nine 
years' laying by," and the continual labour of the file, 



MILTON. 261 

Milton, in more than a seeming inspiration, would 
recite for many hours together to those three fair 
amanuenses, whose filial care has so obliged man- 
kind. At a heat, a panoplied Minerva from the head 
of Jove, the Paradise Lost sprung in wondrous labour 
from his brain ; and it stands, with nothing to add, 
and nothing to take away, a miracle of thought, 
knowledge, and invention. 

Respect alone for a character so illustrious, — and not 
a mean desire to conceal the fact, nor yet the whole- 
some dread of a gigantic opponent, — inducesus to draw 
a veil over some of the principles of even so great 
and good a man as Milton. That he has abetted re- 
gicides, strengthened the hands of evil, and caused 
the enemies of order to blaspheme, — for these, fear- 
lessly, we praise him not ; and if an uncandid and 
misnamed liberality, refusing to others its own boasted 
privilege of private judgment, generously think fit to 
ridicule our weak and puny censure, all we shall have 
to regret is — our feeble advocacy of so strong a 
cause. 



262 



By guiltless guile the spotted trout to snai'e, 
In idlesse all unblamed to while away 
With contemplation sweet the sunny day, 

To stroll in morning's dewy freshness where 
The stream invited, and grey-mantled sky. 
And so with buoyant float, or mimic fly. 

To win the sinless triumphs of thine art, — 

These were thy simple pastimes, kind old man. 
These are thy fame : yet would I praise thee more 

For the rich treasure of a childlike heart 

That longs to compass all the good it can, 
Tender and self-forgetful, gushing o'er 

With cheerful thoughts and generous feelings when 

Loving thou yearnest on thy fellow-men. 



IZAAK WALTON. *263 



It would be very unjust to account of honest Izaak 
as a mere angler. He is far higher to be considered 
as a fisher of men. The " quiet study" of his gentle 
craft is but one phase of a happy, contented, and 
contemplative mind; and no one can read his 
charming book on Angling, — (we must waive those 
necessary cruelties common to man as a predatory 
animal,) — without being more humanized, nay, more 
Christianized by the perusal. To the beautiful bi- 
ographies written by Walton of Donne, Wootton, 
Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson, the same remark 
will apply with double force; for their style is 
equally simple and graphic, while the character of 
the subjects enable their author to rise to high and 
holy themes. 

:; The witty sarcasm of Johnson in his ill-deserved 
definition of angling has often been repeated, but 
the libel should be silenced for ever, now that the 
sportsman of the streams can number among his 
brethren not Walton only, the patriarch of amia- 
bility, nor Cotton his right-minded disciple, but also 
the exemplary Paley, the late eminent Dr. Babington, 
and that giant of science. Sir Humphrey Davey. — 

Angling is an art of the remotest antiquity, and 
one universally distributed : the light and taper Us- 



264 IZAAK WALTON. 

tonson or Chevalier, with its almost invisible line, 
well-bent Kirby, and other " its assigns, very dear 
to fancy, very responsive to the touch, most delicate, 
and of very liberal conceit," has its prototype in the 
iron-wood paddle, strip of hide, and bone fish-hook 
of the savage New-Zealander, or emaciated dweller 
on the Columbia. 

It would appear as if the intellects of fishes them- 
selves were sharpened by approximation with civi- 
lized man, for assuredly, in our seas, but few of the 
finny people would be entrapped by such clumsy 
devices. Walton's quiet shrewdness, and Cotton's 
expert activity, whether by float or fly, would be 
wasted on those dullards of the Oahoorage, and the 
perch of the Lea, or grayling of the Dove would 
scorn the little skill of united Polynesia. 

With respect to the high antiquity of this univer- 
sal craft, which the genius of the draper of Comhill 
has made his airy mausoleum, we read in the book 
of Job, xli. 1, of the capture of the crocodile by 
angling, " Canst thou draw out leviathan with a 
hook, or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest 
down ?" and whether Moses, or Ayoub himself be 
the author, the date of that book cannot be later 
than that of the Pentateuch ; in fact, it is the most 
ancient, as it is the most sublime, of all extant com- 
positions. In Isaiah we find similar allusions, 
although probably ch. xxxvii. 29, " the hook in thy 
nose, and bridle in thy lips," which is capable in 
the original of another meaning, has reference to the 



IZAAK WALTON. 265 

Eastern mode of harnessing oxen. In Matthew, xvii. 
27, we find, '' Cast a hook, and take up the fish that 
first Cometh up:" Horace tells us, " occultum de- 
currit piscis ad hamum ;" and we somewhere read of 
a Roman emperor, — a Tiberius, a Domitian, or a 
Heliogabalus, — who, not satisfied with chance suc- 
cesses in his favourite sport, was accustomed to 
employ expert divers to cany down and fix on his 
imperial tackle the huge tunnies which he delighted 
to land. 

But a word of Walton, before we have done. 
There can be no doubt that, in his way, he was a 
literary genius : with few of the advantages of educa- 
tion, his works excite the admiration of the leamed : 
he had the glory of raising his favourite pastime 
almost into a science, and has embalmed his holiday 
amusements in a classic. For biographical com- 
position, his simplicity was well adapted; and in 
the happy selection of his subjects, Walton's natural 
charity had full scope for unqualified and unflatter- 
ing praise. In his day, — a day which but for Her- 
bert must be regarded " a day of small things," he 
was accounted a very fair poet; and he executed 
without discredit some fugitive commendatory pieces. 
But his highest eulogy is to be found in the habit of 
his mind, that cheerfulness which can accompany 
nothing but innocency of life, and patient hope of 
immortality. It is the fortune of Walton, as of 
Petrarch, to have become known to posterity chiefly 
for his lighter qualities ; the Christian and the sage 

N. 



266 IZAAK WALTON. 

are forgotten in the angler, and the lover : a cari- 
cature is often more like than a soberly intended 
portrait : the world in general prefer amusement to 
instruction, and in our day especially a laughter- 
loving wisdom is the vogue ; philosophy, with a 
merry face instead of wrinkles, no longer bearded, 
and laurelled, and in flowing robes, is content to 
cheat men into good by walking in the garb of folly ; 
a pleasant invention, which may profit the thinking 
few, but full of danger to the heedless many. There 
is " a time to weep, and a time to laugh," but the 
latter is so much the more delightful, that it needs 
little encouragement. To a good mind, the follies 
and meannesses of society have more in them to pity 
than to ridicule. Although Heraclitus and Demo- 
critus, as opposite extremes, might be equally in 
error, yet the disciple of our Great Exemplar, (of 
whom we read that He wept, but, — in the letter to 
Abgarus, — that he was never seen to laugh,) will 
eschew indeed a cheerless ascetism, but for a habit, 
cannot do otherwise in sober wisdom than prefer the 
house of mourning to the house of feasting. A light 
heart has little in common with a light head : the 
leer of folly must not be mistaken for the cherub 
smile of innocence : the glad face of cheerfulness 
differs as much from the flashing eye of humour as 
steady sunshine from the sparks of a furnace. 



267 



When craft and ignorance with envious tongue 

At that lone Florentine their malice hurl'd, 
On thee his robe the parting prophet flung 

And haird thy dawn to glorify the world 
Like the young moon the clouds of night among 

Modest, and solitary, shedding forth 
O'er the broad universe truth's holy light : 

Yet ev'n against the meekness of thy worth 
Detraction's withering breath, and jealous spite 
Shed, not all impotent, their cankering blight, 

For care sat with thee at thy silent hearth, 
O gentle child of wisdom, whose keen eye 

Dissolv'd the sunbeam, pierc'd the depths of earth. 
And read the unwritten charters of the sky. 



N 2 



268 ISAAC NEWTON. 



Galileo of Florence died in the same year (1642) 
that gave birth to our great astronomer. Of the fate 
of Galileo it is unnecessary to say more than that 
the crooked policy of priestcraft, and the mental 
darkness of its benighted people, persecuted the dis- 
cemer of truth even to bonds and imprisonment, and 
forced him to ransom life by the compromise of con- 
science. Although Newton lived in an age and 
country more enlightened, still even he, whose rare 
powers were combined with a modesty so real as to 
induce him to conceal his discoveries, was subjected 
throughout nearly the whole of a long and solitar}^ 
life, to a species of moral martyrdom : the jealousy 
of Hooke, (himself no mean mathematician, and 
whom genuine w^orth should have taught a larger 
liberality,) with that of other factious rivals of less 
note, (whose names would have long ago been for- 
gotten but that they have stuck like burrs on the royal 
garment of Newton's fame,) was to him long a cause 
pregnant with vexations. However, the sun has 
shone aw^ay the vapours, and the originality of 
Newton is now as little challenged as his depth, 
power, and general excellence: the invention of 
fluxions is no longer attributed to Geraldis Mer- 



ISAAC NEWTON. 269 

cator, and priority no longer allowed to the far more 
questionable claims of Robert Hooke. 

Newton was eminently a lover of truth, for its 
own sake, and quite irrespective of ulterior advan- 
tages. It was enough for him to discover the 
treasure; like an antiquarian among his choicest 
coins, he cared neither to spend, nor to exhibit; 
possession, and perhaps exclusive possession, had 
engrossing charms for the too reserved, too modest 
philosopher. He never published, until he was 
forced into it, and so " dreaded the loss of his quiet, 
to run after the shadow of fame," that he often con- 
cealed his discoveries because he knew that his 
problems would meet with the censure of the en- 
vious, and that his originality would be disputed 
with more than Milesian effrontery. 

He shrunk from every opponent irom a love of 
peace and conceded his rights to every jealous 
claimant through fear of controversy. He seems to 
have been a Joseph among his brethren, a lamb 
among the wolves ; and with the wisdom of the ser- 
pent to have united the harmlessness of the dove. 

Immense as was the legacy of science which 
Newton left behind for the instruction of his fellows, 
the world cannot but most deeply regret, that so 
petty a cause as a lap-dog should have reduced in 
any measure, — (and how vast, none can tell,) — that 
rich and mighty heritage : "Oh, Diamond, Diamond, 
thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done !" 



270 ISAAC NEWTON. 

— the seven years' labour of such a mind, at its 
ripest, its fullest, destroyed and irretrievably con- 
sumed in a few evil-omened seconds : how grievous a 
loss to the expectant world, how real a calamity to 
the mild rebuking sage, how rare a triumph to the 
exulting genii of ignorance, and malice ! — Verily, 
unconscious Diamond, like thy namesake, the blood- 
bespotted card of CuUoden, we must count thee 
for a curse : Science, as Scotland, hath rued thy 
being. It has even been said that the memory of 
so great a loss, — a loss to be estimated only by those 
who in some close bureau tremblingly keep the sin- 
gle record of their labours, — shook to its foundations 
the master mind of Newton. At least M. Biot gives 
this as a probable reason that for the last thirty-five 
years of a life devoted to science, the great philoso- 
pher produced little that was new or important. But 
modesty, discoi^agement, and the consciousness of 
having done so much, would appear causes amply 
sufficient for Newton in the noontide of his fame to 
have partially withdrawn from the arena of philoso- 
phy. He dreaded the needful disputations which 
a search after truth involves, and lulled the vigour 
of his mind too early, with " Datur hora quieti." 



271 



Yet are there, ev'n in thee, polluted church, 

A worthier chosen few to walk in white, 
Some undefil'd, whom Grace hath taught to search. 
And seen their humble toil, and sent them light • 
For, like a meteor di-opt upon the night. 
Thy faith, good priest, thy pure religion, shone 

Amid the moral darkness of thine age 
Shedding soft lustre round : nor this alone. 
But the sweet pictures of thy graphic page, 

Young Telemacque, and that enchanted isle. 
The false fair wanton, and mysterious sage. 
How soothingly can these the soul beguile : 
Nor only thus ; a higher goal is won ; 

Thou lurest up to virtue with a smile. 



272 FENELON. 



In the present day, which boasts itself the very 
meridian of intellect, it is a wonderful fact that the 
Cerberus of popery, (the unclean beast that of a verity 
guards the doors of hell, if not of heaven,) should be 
again raising with applause its triple-crowned front. 
Popery, the system of intolerance and superstition, 
finds favour in an age of liberalism and infidelity ! 
popery, the essence of which consists in the spiritual 
and temporal tyranny of one weak man, claiming to 
be irresponsible and infallible, this monstrous weed of 
the darkest ages, is flourishing in our cultivated soil, 
and strangely twining around the uncongenial thistles 
of republican opinion. — Is there not something of 
judicial blindness here ? Are we not approaching 
the " prius dementat ?" — 

Without doubt, there are, and ever have been, 
many persons of truly Christian principles and 
practice in the communion of the church of Rome ; 
it would be worse than illiberal, it would be false, to 
think or say the contrary : — but this, so far from serving 
that church as a boast, has necessarily happened in 
spite of her system. It is a fact, that she has uni- 
formly persecuted her truly religious members, — 
Fenelon, Quesnel, and Blaise Pascal occur to the 
mind at once : and as for the people of God beyond 



FENELON. 273 

her pale, the world is red with their blood : bear 
witness, Turin, Berne, Madrid, Paris, London, and 
the mother of abominations, papal Rome. 

It is a mere contradiction, however our modem 
sophists may argue the matter, to suppose that a 
man is liberal, and enlightened, while he can be- 
friend a system built up of darkness, and intolerance. 
To hinder evil is to help good ; and the foe to big- 
otry is the true liberal. But words have lost their 
just signification; the rebel is dubbed a patriot, and 
the churl said to be bountiful. According to the com- 
mentary of these latter days, it would appear we 
must marvellously alter that saying of old time, " The 
liberal man deviseth liberal things, and by liberal 
things shall he stand :" out on such puerile tautology ! 
and let modern politicians thus expound the text, 
— " The liberal pusheth his economy, beyond mean- 
ness, even to injustice ; the liberal when he seeth 
traitors consenteth unto them, and hath been a par- 
taker with the rebellious ; the liberal grindeth the 
face of the poor, and gi-udgeth the widow's pension ; 
the liberal cringeth unto lewd fellows of the baser 
sort, and lieth in the dust, while they trample on his 
neck ; the liberal abetteth superstition ; the liberal 
refuseth succour to the only system of religion which 
can make men free indeed ; the liberal voteth abun- 
dance of money not his own to aid in upholding 
systems of acknowledged error, which degrade men's 
minds, and fetter their consciences ; the liberal 
filcheth from the needy, to add more provision to 

N 5 



274 FENELON. 

himself; the liberal taketh much account of the fail- 
ings of the good, and lightly regardeth the felon and 
the murderer ; the liberal sweareth unto his neigh- 
bour, and deceiveth him ; the liberal despiseth ho- 
nour, and rebuketh generosity : and so, by devising 
things most illiberal, most unjust, most besotted, 
most absurd, by extremities of meanness shall he 
stand." 

And let us not hear in answer, that the name 
" liberal" has many senses, for its modern usurpers 
have ingeniously abused them all; in matters of 
mind, not less than in matters of money, in deahng 
with men's souls, as well as with their substance, the 
term, as now applied, is a misnomer : if men love 
and covet that noble epithet, let them so act as to 
deserve it, and not, for gross demerits, hear it in bit- 
ter irony ; if they will be what they have been, let 
the bastard-children of liberality be named, accord- 
ing to their deeds, the Belial-sons of licence. 



275 



Turn, wondrous shade of an immortal man, 

And give my welcome favourable heed, 

While my mute soul considers each bright deed 
That gems thy crown, imperial artizan, 

Whose patriot labour thy rude country freed 
From Scythian darkness ; for to thee, great prince, 
Despite a Jezebel-sister's cursed plan 

Of luring thee to pleasure's guilty ways. 

Justly belongs the honourable praise 
Of waking a barbaiian world of slaves 
To fame and power, that have not faded since : 

Nobly the bronze colossus tells thy worth, 

For he that blesses, helps, improves, and saves, 

Is the true hero of this strife-torn earth. 



276 



CZAR PETER. 



The life of Peter the Great by Voltaire has made 
the leading facts of his life familiar to all. Before 
the reign of Peter, who was proclaimed czar in 1682, 
when only ten years of age, Russia was in a state 
of more than comparative barbarism. The early 
talents of the child, military and civil, were seen 
with suspicious jealousy by his half-sister Sophia, 
who most wickedly attempted to corrupt and ener- 
vate his masculine mind by surrounding him closely 
w^ith the seductions of pleasure : an atrocious design, 
for which precedents were furnished in the treat- 
ment of the son of Dion by Dionysius, (as narrated 
by Cornelius Nepos, x. 4,) of the Earl of Warwick 
by Henry the Seventh, and, unless popular ideas be 
erroneous, an example has been lately shown to the 
world in the life and early death of the Duke of 
Keichstadt. 

Peter was in many respects a type of true great- 
ness : he could lay aside the ensigns of royalty, and 
toil as a common labourer in a dockyard ; he could 
emulate Roman Brutus in sacrificing a traitorous 
son, Alexis, for the weal of Russia ; he could imi- 
tate, at least for once, the noble Scipio, in giving up 
the object of his passion to another : he could listen 
to the wise counsels of an obscure foreigner, his 



CZAR PETER. 277 

youthful Mentor, Le Fort ; by almost single efforts 
he raised for his country a standing army ; although 
bom with a natural aversion to water, he not only 
conquered it in his own person, but covered the four 
seas with his navies ; Petersburgh rose at his com- 
mand ; arts, sciences, religion, and laws prospered in 
his reign ; and in one word, to him individually Rus- 
sia owes her present proud station among the na- 
tions of the world. But with all this, it must not 
be overlooked that self-controul formed not one of 
Peter's excellencies; he acknowledged that it was 
easier to reform an empire, than to bridle the pas- 
sions of his own heart ; and in many respects he 
must appear in the light of a fierce barbarian, and 
a cruel despot. 

The title Czar is commonly but falsely imagined 
to be that of Caesar; for, however modern innova- 
tions of the coinage may countenance this error, it is 
certain that the word is more coiTectly Tsar, mean- 
ing prince, and nearly allied to Shah in Persian : in 
all probability the name was current among the 
Hyperboreans long anterior to the empire of the 
Caesars. 

It remains only to be explained, that the bronze 
statue of Peter on the famous granite rock at St. Pe- 
tersburgh, represents the emperor stretching forth 
his hand in the act of blessing. 



2?8 



1 a ^ IB ® a. 

Awake, my glory, and the world's delight ! 
Bring hither tabret, harp, and lute, and lyre, 
And greet him with the whole angelic quire, 
For Handel now from earth has wing'd his flight 

A holy bard in chariot of fire, 
To mingle with your band in garments bright. 
Oh, with what harmony to hymn aright 
Thy canzonet of praise, monarch of song. 

So that its music may enchant the mind. 
Like some sweet air, that might to thee belong, 

Where holiness with melody combin'd. 
Majestic thought in thrilling sound expressed, 
Cheat of their sorrows thine indebted kind. 
And soothe our souls with harpings of the Blest ! 



HANDEL. 279 



George Frederic Handel was the son of a phy- 
sician at Halle, and was originally bred to the law. 
Providence however had destined hira for better 
things, and although his parents, well aware of his 
early-developed genius, and fearful it might ruin his 
prospects, deprived him of all instruments of music, 
the world was not to be so rudely disappointed : the 
force of natural talent prevailed against all obstacles, 
than which none can be imagined more chilling or 
repulsive than home persecution, and indifference. 
The young musician hid a little clavicord in his 
garret, and played, often nearly all night long, when 
the rest of the house were asleep. It is a strange 
fact telling little for the shrewdness of parents, and 
one which most men in the course of their reading 
must have observed, that genius in all ages has first 
had to combat " the foes of his own household :" 
the private history of innumerable men of eminence 
opens, (doubtless from motives of interested though 
blind affection,) with the strong opposition of a 
■ parent. 

H The time would fail us, were we to dive into an- 
B^ tiquity for instances of this extiaordinary circum- 
H| stance ; sculptors, painters, poets, scholars, divines, 
^H heroes by land and by sea, rise before the mind in a 

■ 



280 HANDEL. 

cloud of witnesses : not to be very multitudinous or 
discursive in examples, Socrates and Lucian were 
most painstaking statuaries: Boccacio was forced 
into a counting-house ; Ben Jonson ran away from 
the brickkiln ; Ariosto was for years a groaning mar- 
tyr to the pandects; Boileau was so heartstricken 
by the pressure of uncongenial studies, that when he 
gave up the law and the church at the age of thirty, 
to follow the bent of his genius, he was accounted 
a " most dull blockhead ;" of Chatterton it was said 
that he " never could learn anything ;" Shakspeare 
in his day was considered a scapegrace, because he 
would not be a butcher; Ovid, Martial, and Silius 
Italicus, Comeille, Moliere, and Voltaire, all threw up 
their obligatory legal pursuits in disgust; Goldsmith, 
Smollett, and Crabbe made a like renunciation of 
medicine: Pope would have better pleased his 
friends had he turned linendraper, Solomon Gess- 
ner eloped from the shop, John Howard exchanged 
groceries for statistical philanthropy, and Stowe 
the antiquary was bred a tailor. From such an 
induction, — and it might be indefinitely extended, — 
what conclusion must we arrive at ? a like rea- 
soning has popularly placed the sons of geniuses 
in the category of imbeciles, but it would be an 
error to impute any thing to their fathers, be- 
yond the blindness of prearranged ambition: it 
cannot be doubted that all the above men of note, 
and their like, had given frequent manifestations of 
their extraordinary talents from the nursery upwards, 



HANDEL. 281 

quite sufficient to have induced their natural guardi- 
ans to help them along that road to honour which 
special genius had opened to each : but the plan of 
life had been predetermined by a father ; and provi- 
dence upset the rash proposal of man: — I'homme 
propose, et Dieu dispose : or is human nature indeed 
so radically stubborn, that, like the fountains at Ver- 
sailles, the mere pressure of opposition has caused 
men of mind to rush into eminence ? perhaps after 
all, as the foolish bird in Gay's fable, " They ne'er 
had been in that condition, but for a parent's prohi- 
bition," and the children of heaven-bom genius, 
may thus indirectly owe all things to their earthly 
stepfathers. 

It would be most unfair were we to stop here, in 
this episodical discussion: there are, on the other 
hand, many names, neither few in number, nor in- 
ferior in talent, which have most directly been in- 
debted for all their success, literary, or otherwise, to 
the careful training of their parents, or at least to 
the liberal education afforded by their bounty. Gene- 
rally, where the biographer is silent, these advan- 
tages should be presupposed ; and although perhaps, 
on an accurate calculation, the worse side of the 
question will for a time seem to have been the rule, 
still the exceptions are so numerous, as fairly to 
challenge its truth. Space forbids a per contra 
enumeration of instances which would include re- 
markably Pindar, Plato, Zeno, Raffaelle, and Tasso : 
and thousands of others from the foundation of the 



282 HANDEL. 

world to our own day, might raake a strong case in 
favour of parental shrewdness. 

But to return, though only for a moment: with 
Handel, however hindered at first, musical talent 
was early encouraged, owing to the potent argu- 
ments of a German duke, who all but forced the 
father to indulge his son's propensity; and conse- 
quently, we are the richer by some pieces composed 
in actual childhood. The works of Handel, among 
which the Messiah may be well accounted his great 
masterpiece, occupy many volumes, and abound 
with the most exquisite symphonies, the most tri- 
umphant hymns, and with choruses that reach the 
true sublime. 

The name of our thesis so naturally suggests 
Psalmody, that it is difficult to escape from so 
obvious a subject. After what has gone before, 
we can now however hazard but one observa- 
tion. It is a great pity that in cases not infre- 
quent so little judgment is shown in the matter 
of selecting hymns and psalms for congregational 
worship: take, as a fair example. Bishop Kenn's 
morning and evening hymns: their apt and good 
season of use is for an individual on his first awak- 
ing, and latest lying down : and yet how frequently 
is not " my first spring of thought and will" called 
upon to be filled with pious feelings at eleven 
o'clock in the day, how often do we not hear a con- 
gregation, invoking " and with sweet sleep mine 
eyelids close" just before the sermon of a three 



HANDEL. 283 

o'clock sendee. No spiritualizing can clear up this 
absurdity. Many other such things there be, equally 
unwise; and as the smallest exercise of right judg- 
ment would set matters right, there is little excuse for 
the existence of evils which, though trifling in them- 
selves, are often pernicious in their consequences on 
" those that are without." 

If music be indeed an aid to religion, it ought to 
be more congregationally cultivated ; at present, the 
charity-school in our towns, and the discordant 
orchestra in our villages, are the great and injurious 
monopolists of Psalmody. No cause, but lack of 
culture, operates to prevent the national ear of Eng- 
land from being as musical as that of Germany: 
and a well-directed attention in those who have au- 
thority over the church is alone requisite in order 
to convert what is now so often the dissonant exhibition 
of a few, into the harmonized devotion of the many. 



284 



^%(&m. 



Hence, ye profane: and thou, mine honest muse, 
Banish the silly blush from thy false cheek, — 
With liberal voice to Wesley's glory speak, 

The holy man whom God was pleased to choose 
His instrument ; from one so good, so meek, 

High honour to withhold, or to refuse 
Were folly, if not sin ; we hail thee then 
Glad bearer of good tidings unto men, 

Zealous and noble, worthy of the phrase 

In which thy Lord, and our's, hath greeted thee. 

Well done, thou faithful servant, thine be praise ! 
To think, — the cloisters thy pure feet have trod 

Mine have trod too ; grace grant it, — ev'n to me. 
That like a Wesley I may walk with God. 



WESLEY. 285 



The word Methodist signifies ' orderly,' and was 
the name of a learned society at Rome : it was ap- 
plied to the young Wesley when at Oxford, on ac- 
count of his regular habits, and adopted by his fol- 
lowers in his honour. John Wesley, God's witness for 
the truth in an age more than commonly immoral, was 
born in 1703. He was educated, — as is alluded to in 
the concluding lines, at Charter-house and Christ 
Church. He is believed to have travelled 300,000 
miles, and to have preached nearly 50,000 sermons 
in the cause of religion. It would be little short of 
ridiculous to insist upon any thing in praise of his 
character and conduct. 

The followers of Wesley are commonly reported to 
dissent very little, if at all, in matters of religious 
truth from the Church of England. Surely the dif- 
ferences of a body so respectable, and so pious, 
might be arranged : a mother should not cast off her 
children, nor should children abjure their mother, 
for a matter of little moment : schism, however 
lightly regarded in these days of licence, is not so 
venial an error, that it can be committed with impu- 
nity for a slight cause. If the established Church, in 
times less enlightened and perhaps less religious, cast 
the Wesleyans from her, she ought now, like the rulers 



286 WESLEY. 

of Philippi, " to go, and beseech them, and bring them 
in :" if, on the contrary, they cut themselves from the 
parent tree, it is their duty in conference to agree to 
a reconciliation, now that many causes of dissent 
have in the lapse of time worn away. No institution of 
man has ever been, nor can ever be, immaculate : but 
we may fairly challenge the world to frame a system 
more beneficent, more true, and with more of the 
elements of durability, than the National Church 
offers to us. Her adversaries owe to her all their 
good; and the evils superadded as the effects of 
schism have, in many cases if not all, far outweighed 
those which originally caused the separation. There 
is such a thing as mutual forbearance, without the 
slightest compromise of individual convictions: we 
ought by this time to be able to act upon this differ- 
ence : let us be reconciled. 



287 



Fresh Nature, gentle nurse, we run to thee 

With all the love of childhood's innocent heart, 
Hiding from those dull works and ways of art 
Glad to escape their schooling, and be free ; 

O fairy landscape, — fields, and wooded hills, 
Green valleys, mirrored lakes, and sunny rills, 
Young flowers, and blushing fruits, and tufted 
groves, 
How Eden-like a home of peace are ye 

Peopled with angel-guests, and infant loves ! — 
So companied, and in a scene so sweet, 
High summer's gorgeous tribute would we bring, 

And lay them, priest of nature, at thy feet, 
While their white bells the wedded lilies ring. 
And kissing roses a Linnaeus greet. 



288 LINNiEUS. 



Botany has been pleasantly called the science 
whose paths are strewed with flowers ; but truly with 
little reason, if we look to the methods in which 
teachers and professors has^e generally expounded it. 
To the student unacquainted with the dead languages, 
and such are most of the fair disciples of Flora, the 
aspect of this science must appear perfectly alarm- 
ing; endless Anglo -Grecian words, conveying to such 
a pupil no idea beyond mystery, and only pleasing 
because cabalistic, choke the rosy path as with 
thorns and briars ; the harshest sounds become, by 
mere force of abused memory, emblems of the 
most beautiful ideas ; and the humblest weed goes 
forth fearfully invested with " apopetalous angio- 
spermous dicotyledons !" Now, really, for English 
purposes, this is most absurd ; how much better to 
adhere where we can to the fine old Saxon names, at 
once poetical, exact, and telling out the special 
uses which herb-craft has discovered among its sim- 
ples ; and whenever in the progress of knowledge, 
these fail us, to coin in plain English those " sesqui- 
pedalia verba," for the uses of popular instruction. 
We want in fact a well translated botanical treatise; 
and perhaps these remarks apply, though scarcely in 
equal degree, to Entomology, Geology, and most 



LINN^US. 289 

other sciences. Let us write more for the education 
of our own people, and not be perpetually haunted 
with the catholicity of science. 

The life of Linnaeus, a Swede of the last century, 
offers few salient points to touch upon, beyond the 
great theme of the science which has immortalized his 
name. His system is full of the choicest poetry and 
truth ; his primary groups are most imaginative per- 
sonations, where boors and slaves jostle with kings 
and tetrarchs ; and his discovery of the beautiful 
analogy preserved by nature in the plan of repro- 
duction even among the minutest scions of the vege- 
table world, is perhaps the crowning efibrt of his 
genius. 

It is an anecdote most creditable to the patriotic 
feelings of Linn sens, as well as worth mentioning to 
show how high was his European fame, that when 
the King of Spain invited him to preside over the 
college of Madrid, with a pension of two thousand 
pistoles, a patent of nobility, and the free exercise of 
his own religion, he declined the offer with fit ac- 
knowledgments, modestly saying, " If I have any 
merits, they are due to my own country." And Swe- 
den was not ungrateful : when he died, after a life of 
distinguishing honours, at the age of seventy-one, a 
general mourning took place at Upsal, the whole 
university attended the funeral, medals were struck 
to commemorate his fame, and the king spoke mourn- 
fully of Sweden's loss, in a solemn speech from the 
throne. 

o 



290 



3 # i^ ^ ^ # i^. 

Stern moralist, whose potent intellect 

Flooded the world with all the Nile of truth, 
Slave to no master, prisoner of no sect, 
Albeit disease, and want, and harsh neglect 

Were long the bitter portion of thy youth. 
Thine Atlas mind stood firm beneath the weight. 

Preaching the noble homily to men 
That poverty hath uses real and great, 

In quickening thought, urging the sluggish pen. 
Claiming due labours of the listless brow. 

Forcing its flowers of wit, and fruits of sense. 
And for man's wonder, bidding grandly flow 

The deluge of a Johnson's eloquence, 
Like thundering Niagara, strong and slow. 



JOHNSON. 291 



The " sweet uses of adversity" find an illustrious 
example in Samuel Johnson. Truly, his " poverty 
and not his will" consented to those works which have 
so much enriched mankind : in him lack of energy was 
a real disease which nothing but necessity could cure. 
There is little occasion in this place to illustrate the 
fact by anecdotes, but perhaps it will be apposite to 
state that we owe Rasselas to the penniless piety of 
Johnson, who wrote it to defray the expences of his 
mother's funeral. His works are in every body's hands, 
and universally admitted to be, both for high prin- 
ciple and commanding talent, the first of our prose 
classics : his independence of mind is as well known 
■ as his often laborious poverty, and the unhappy * evil ' 
Br under which his body groaned 

^B In the poetical language of the North American 
BT Indians, the word Niagara, (so pronounced, and not 
W Niagara,) means " thunder-water ;" a truly magnifi- 
H cent expression. 

H Johnson has given himself a character for that 
B desultory kind of reading, which superficial judges 
" in education are accustomed to condemn. He de- 
clared he had never read any book through except 
his Bible. His habit was to ramble from book to 
book, a bee among the flowers of literature, collect- 

o 2 



292 JOHNSON. 

ing and condensing the excellence of them all, 
and hoarding in his mind their combined and va- 
rious knowledge. Nor is it any wonder that so 
great a genius, whose length and breadth and 
depth and height are measureless every way by 
common intellects, should be so used per force. 
Like Newton in the school-class of mathematics, 
when as a boy he skimmed over the pages of Euclid, 
and took the whole in at a glance, Johnson was 
not to be stopped in the midst of his intuitive per- 
ceptions by the slow process of ordinary teachers : 
long before his author he had arrived at just conclu- 
sions, and often where from his own elaborating mind 
he could of the same materials have worked out 
richer substance, no one can wonder that he 
eschewed at once the tardy pace, and unsatisfying 
viaticum of the common class of books; and so 
by racing when his author would have walked, and 
digging where another would have sped, he gained, 
commendably discursive, the wealth of universal 
knowledge. To wade through the dull slough of a 
tedious work may be a proper system of instruction 
to punish idleness and to promote industry: but 
let not high genius, such as a Johnson's, be tram- 
melled so unworthily, nor judged so harshly. Through 
desultory toil, he arrived at the deep things of 
truth, and might have written many books, of which 
he was accused that he had never read them : the 
Rambler had collected abundance of wisdom, and the 
Idler was high-priest in the temple of knowledge. 



293 



Thou marvel, life, the indescribable ! 

Whether in spirit, seeming then concrete, 
Perpetual motion, or pervading heat, 

Or matters' subtlest web, thy might doth dwell, 
How rare, how rank, how various is thy form ! 

Behold, thou lurkest in the fallow clod, 
Climbest the fir, and grovellest with the worm, 
Reignest in man, and ridest on the storm 

Peopling far worlds, — how many who can tell ? — 
The simple universal breath of God : 

We, darkling children, may not compass more 
Than note thine influences, still the same 
One cause, though Legion in effect and name. 

And with Galvani gratefully adore. 



294 GALVANI. 



It is a curious question, and open to much specu- 
lation and experiment, whether electricity, galvanism, 
magnetism, motion, light, and heat may not all be 
summed up in one syllable. Life. The connection of 
the three former with each other is now established 
beyond a doubt, by practical philosophers who have 
improved upon the original idea of Ritter, certainly 
the first discoverer of that interesting fact ; he hav- 
ing by means of the galvanic pile charged a louis 
d'or with both positive and negative electricity, and 
by the same means magnetised a golden balanced 
needle. Perhaps, not long hence, the three influen- 
ces will be found to be identical, or merely modi- 
fications of each other. It would not be difficult 
to show that motion, light, and heat are similarly 
connected both with each other, and with the one 
unseen fluid, although to speculate on such a point 
without experimenting is dangerous. Probably 
when all the six properties, or energies, are better 
known, the great secret, what is Life, will be near 
its revelation. But on these hidden things, it is be- 
coming to throw out no more than a loose and hum- 
ble hint. 

There is a great deal to be done some day by the 
Christian philosopher in critical exposition of the 



GALVANI. 295 

accuracy of casual allusions to scientific truth scat- 
tered in the scriptures, chiefly in Job and the 
Psalms. " He stretcheth out the north over the 
empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing ;" 
" he sendeth forth lightnings with rain, bringing 
the wind out of his treasures ;" " the water 
above the firmament," " the foundations of the 
great deep broken up," and many such passages, 
will, if closely examined be seen to contain more 
than meets the eye. It will be found that the Author 
of the inspired volume, though only incidentally 
touching upon other than moral truth, still is philo- 
sophically accurate in science, wherever it is alluded 
to. True, things are spoken of as they appear to or- 
dinary men ; as for example, even a Newton, or a 
Bacon, would not scruple to use the terms, sunrise 
and sunset, although well aware that the apparent 
motion is really that of the world round its axis : but 
still, beyond the surface, the diligent and keen en- 
quirer will find much unsuspected knowledge. As a 
slight obiter instance, take Joshua commanding the 
sun to stand still : let the reflecting astronomer con- 
sider the hidden wisdom of the addition, " and thou, 
moon :" not that Joshua was aware of it, but that he 
was over-ruled to be accurate here ; and that, pro- 
bably because it is philosophically inaccurate to 
speak of the sun standing still ; the fact being that 
the earth rested on its axis : but when we consider 
what a contradictory moral influence it would have 
had on the contending armies, if Joshua had bidden 



296 GALVANI. 

the earth stand still, and behold, at such seeming 
presumption, the sun stands still, we shall perceive 
at once why the successor of Moses was commanded 
to say, " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon," and 
to add, " and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon." 
But these hints of philosophy in scripture are deep 
things, and it is not he that runs who can read them : 
neither is the present writing so foreign to the sub- 
ject as may seem, for galvanism, or whatever be its 
name, being a law of nature, may be perceived in 
more than one passage of the thirty-eighth chapter 
of Job, and elsewhere. But it is time to say a word 
on our specific thesis. 

Lewis Galvani, of Bologna, was a distinguished 
physician of the last century, and will be known 
to the latest posterity by having associated his name 
with the secret of science he discovered. His 
private character was one of the most amiable and 
unexceptionable the history of our kind has pro- 
duced : from earliest youth to the grave of a sex- 
agenarian, true and undefiled religion, (albeit he was 
a Romanist,) was his rule of life and his support in 
death : he married the object of his constant affec- 
tions, and bewailed her loss with unchanging sor- 
row : he lived useful, and toiled not vainly for a 
lasting fame : in those evil days for Europe, which 
succeeded the first French Revolution, he was 
strong in his abhorrence of republicanism, and, 
indeed, despite of years and honours, was in tem- 
poral things made a martyr by the bad men then 



GALVANI. 297 

ruling the world, who stripped the aged philo- 
sopher of his dignities, and emoluments. Mean- 
while, Justice, Humanity, Science, and Excellence, 
through the length and breadth of Europe, indig- 
nantly bewailed and loudly honoured the victim of 
Ignorance and Anarchy. And so, glorified as much 
by the censure of the wicked, as the praises of the 
good, Galvani died, on the 5th of November, 1798. 



o 5 



298 



g^?^$^(gc©^. 



How might a Briton bless thee without blame, — 

Yet how deny thy worth his honest praise ? — 
Great, virtuous, modest, whose unspotted name 
Is stamp'd in gold upon the rolls of fame, 

Whose brow is circled by her brightest bays, — 
Part of thy glory still let England claim, 

Her foe she pardons, while she loves her son : 
Into what times, what regions shall we roam 

To find thy peer, — Leonidas in fight, 
Pure Cincinnatus, meek retiring home, 

Fabius the wise, or Cato the upright ? — 
Nature hath cull'd the best of Greece and Rome, 

And moulding all their virtues into one, 

Gave to her infant world a Washington. 



WASHINGTON. 299 



It is proverbial, that we have most quaiTels with 
our nearest, and are most jealous of our dearest : 
and certainly Britain and the United States, stand- 
ing to each other in the relations of an aged mother 
and a child come to maturity, furnish national illus- 
tration of its truth. Still, on the whole, we kindly re- 
gard each other : the democratic spirit of our wayward 
offspring, even if so deeply rooted now as it was 
formerly, cannot quite burst the bonds of natural 
affection : such apples of discord as our own most 
feeble colonial policy has suffered to ripen on the 
bough, still need be gathered by neither, if both 
will but for a time forbear. Here indeed is a legiti- 
mate field for conciliation, where none threatens, 
and where all will agree to an amicable arrange- 
ment of differences : there are no claims on either 
side which need be accounted irreconcileable, no 
avr]KiGTa KaKa : and the question of a few leagues 
of territory is not one, which, all other causes being 
absent, ought to embroil two great nations in the 
horrors of war. America looks back with pride 
upon the past glories of Great Britain, which a bet- 
ter government might still restore, and we look for- 
ward with complacence to their reflection in our 
son. As for determinate enmity, the better majority 



300 WASHINGTON. 

of Americans would no more rejoice in the ruin of 
Old England, than we should to hear that a mighty 
angel had unloosed the chains of the Atlantic, and 
commanded it to drown the fair cities of the West. 
In origin, language, religion, and the foundations of 
law we are one; and though the birthright was 
seized too soon, we can pardon the young heir's 
wantonness, although we rebuke it. 

George Washington came of a family, which had 
settled in Virginia from England. Waiving altoge- 
ther the question of the original justice of his cause, 
there can be but one opinion of his great qualities, 
and commanding talents. He was brave, patriotic, 
and discreet ; of high principle and strict integrity ; 
eminently a lover of domestic quiet, and striving for 
retirement, in the midst of a career which might 
have made weaker minds ambitious ; " non sibi sed 
toti," was the rule of his life; he, if any one, well 
merited the " Pater patiiae" to be graven on his 
statue: he, if any one, was worthy of the golden 
praise, " First in peace, First in war, and First in 
the hearts of his countrymen." 

The home government of Washington was emi- 
nently one not of force but of persuasion ; like 
eastern shepherds, he did not drive, but lead: in 
fact, his authority extended over a country too 
young to be wisely ruled by strength of arm ; the 
muscles of his power were infantile, and would 
have been weakened by a strain: yet with this 
habitual suaviter in modo, we find him on all 



WASHINGTON. 301 

just occasions fortiter in re : his concessions were 
dignified, and his compulsions generous: he knew 
how to distinguish liberality from liberalism, and 
conciliation from cowardice. But in another hemi- 
sphere how diverse, yet in some apparent similarity, 
must run the tale: the nerves of a Hercules among 
nations are touched so tenderly that they become 
irritable ; the government of a millenarian country 
so mildly insinuates its wishes, and so readily re- 
tracts them, that concession has long ago sunk into 
meanness, and moderation into pusillanimity: while 
by casual fits of misdirected obstinacy, ever the at- 
tribute of disappointed feebleness, the thunders of 
state are hurled against some friendless though not 
sinless poor, where they ought to have stricken 
the guiltier foreheads of the mighty. The lion is a 
culprit, and the mouse a victim. Humble asses, not 
prouder lords of the forest, are found to be the sacri- 
legious cause of plague, for having eaten church- 
yard thistles. " By precept and example too" the 
powerful, perhaps unconsciously, instil principles 
which strike at the roots of social order, and then 
marvel that their lessons are practised by scholars 
all too diligent. The would-be great, and the should- 
be wise rear a hopeful nursery, and then with par- 
ricidal hand turn against their own offspring. Truly, 
it is never too late to mend : but with amendment, 
confession from ihe lip, and repentance from the 
heart should ever walk companions, — yea, more, — 
that humility which takes " a lower place," and so 



302 WASHINGTON. 

might yet some future day be urged to " go up 
higher :" and not, in lieu thereof, a still presuming 
self-confidence; a total change in manner of life, 
with unblushing vindication of the past ; an anxious 
severity against deluded tools, and a delicate tender- 
ness towards those who used them. The hand that 
fostered should not slay, for very shame. It is, to 
say the least, unseemly to discern in the convicting 
power a particeps criminis. 



303 



Glorious Apostle of Humanity. 

Whose every thought was love to God and Man, 
Whose every day sped one consistent plan 
Of energiz'd benevolence, — to thee 

O noblest of the Howards, would I bring 
A young disciple's worship : tell it out, 
Daughters of guilt, and sons of misery, 
Poor prisoners, in a grateful chorus sing, 
Felons, and common thieves, ye rabble rout 
Of jail, or galley, vilest, meanest, worst. 

Whom all but godlike Howard's pitying eye 
Left to your desperate fate, as things accurst. 

To greet your Friend in generous rapture shout, 
And raise your paean to his home on high. 



304 HOWARD. 



To do justice to the claims of a character so illus- 
trious as that of John Howard within our limits is 
scarcely possible. Panegyrists of his life, motives, 
and usefulness abound, and perhaps it will not be 
amiss to cull a few rays from one and another, and so to 
present the constellation with beams unshorn. Hear 
the eulogium of Jeremy Bentham, pronounced upon 
Howard in that philosopher's celebrated Panopticon: 
" In the scale of moral desert, the labours of the 
legislator and the writer are as far below his, as earth 
is below heaven. His was the truly Christian 
choice : the lot in which is to be found the least of 
that which selfish nature covets, and the most of 
what it shrinks from. His kingdom was of a better 
world : he died a martyr, after living an apostle." 

The praises of Edmund Burke are in a strain 
neither less fervent nor less eloquent : " His labours 
and writings have done much to open the eyes and 
hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe — not 
to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the state- 
liness of temples, — not to make accurate measure- 
ments of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to 
form a scale of the curiosity of modem art, — ^not to 
collect medals or collate manuscripts, — but to dive 
into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the in- 



HOWARD. 305 

fection of hospitals, to sun-ey the mansions of sor- 
row and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of 
misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the 
forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to ^dsit the 
forsaken, and to compass and collate the distresses 
of all men in all countries." How rare a tribute to 
exalted excellence ! how beautiful an expansion of 
the saying of St. James, " True religion and unde- 
filed is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in 
their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from 
the world !" 

Dr. Aikin hails Howard as " one of the most ex- 
traordinary characters of his age, and the leader 
in all plans of ameliorating the condition of the 
wretched :" and a pastoral friend, Mr. Palmer, in a 
funeral sermon says of him, " it was his meat and 
drink to make all around him happy: — but his 
kindness was not confined to the bodies of his fel- 
low-creatures, it extended to their spiritual and im- 
mortal part ; — in short he was a universal blessing — 
what wonder if such a man were universally be- 
loved?" 

Extracts of a similar character might be produced 
to any amount, but enough, it is conceived, has 
been already stated to prove how highly the virtues 
of Howard were estimated by his fellows. The history 
of his life is only to recount journeys of benevolence, 
undertaken solely with the view of comforting the 
distressed in every country of Europe, full of per- 
sonal risks, pains, and privations, which it required 



306 HOWARD. 

the patience of a Christian, and the courage of a 
hero to bear up against ; labours of love, repaid in- 
deed by a heavenly reward, but nevertheless acknow- 
ledged with unprecedented honours upon earth ; 
before kings and princes, and even in the despotic 
realms of Austria and Russia, he boldly and suc- 
cessfully dared to plead the cause of " the poor pri- 
soner j" reckless of dangers in the path of duty, he 
walked unharmed among the adders, and for many 
years no deadly thing harmed him ; he deigned not 
to turn aside from the arrows of the pestilence, for he 
knew that he abode under the shadow of the Al- 
mighty: by the admiring rich as by the grateful 
poor he was beloved for a messenger of mercy upon 
earth, until it pleased God to cut him off, when full 
ripe in his noble career, at Cherson a new settlement 
on the Euxine, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. 

After his death, the statue, which his modesty 
had long refused while livings was erected to his 
memory in St. Paul's, but the better tribute to his 
useful labours is a recollected contrast between what 
he found prisons, and what he left them: before 
Howard's disinterested toils, they were nurseries 
of crime, hiding-places of oppression, hotbeds of 
disease; his efforts, long solitary, but since nobly 
seconded by female as well as male philanthropists, 
have gone far to make them schools for reformation, 
with the favourable adjuncts of cleanliness, health, 
industry, and order. In short, rightly to estimate 
these things, the fevered malefactor of a century 



HOWARD. 307 

back should arise, and revisit his jail ; and the like- 
ness of Howard might be placed in every prison, 
with the simple and expressive motto, Qualis, cir- 
cumspice! — For, like the admirable Titus, whose 
" Perdidi diem" the zealous philanthropist could 
never truly utter, he richly deserv^es to be called 
" amor, et deliciae humani generis," the love, and 
the delight of the whole family of man. 



308 



Dwell ye then round about us, cheering us 
Alike in crowded haunts and solitude, 
Warding from ill, and ministering good, 
O bright and blessed Sabaoth, — is it thus ? 

Alas, what can we give of gratitude 
To your pure essences, that, o'er us each 
Hovering, delight to love and aid and teach 
Poor prisoners in the flesh ? — Yon sainted bard 
Who sang Messiah, loved the happy thought, 
Praying that for his angel guide and guard 
The spirit of his Meta might be brought 
E'en from the grave : O lover, didst thou err, 

It were an error with such sweetness fraught 
I too would ask an angel minister. 



KLOPSTOCK. 309 



Cicero says of the immortality of the soul, that if 
it be an erroneous opinion, it is one so conducive to 
happiness, that he for one is content blindly to be- 
lieve it. The question of the ministration of angels, 
the grounds of which are set on very strong founda- 
tions, is a similar case : and even if the scripture 
texts which seem to countenance the idea, can by 
possibility be explained otherwise, as referable 
merely to spiritual matters, or to another era of being, 
still one is glad, in an error of so happy and innocent 
a complexion, to walk in company with Socrates, 
Origen, Tertullian, Grotius, Andrews, Home, Por- 
teus, and Klopstock. With such suffrages, no one 
need be ashamed to confess his faith in the ministry 
of angels; truly with these " mallem errare." Of 
Friedrick Klopstock, whom Germany accounts her 
Milton, we know too little, owing chiefly to the 
mediocrity of our translation of his Messiah : the 
original work is a complete divine epic, and is writ- 
ten in hexameter verse. The death of his wife Mar- 
garet, whom he familiarly called Meta and Cidli, 
has given occasion to the poet to show his tenderness 
and religion in many beautiful pieces, and particu- 
larly in a series of letters to and from his " dear 



t 



310 KLOPSTOCK. 

espoused saint" after her decease : Elizabeth Rowe 
preceded him in this idea; but in Klopstock's 
case the charm consists in the reality of his grief, 
and the beautiful manner in which, happily self- 
deceived, he drew consolation from those holy com- 
munings. 

The writer appends a free version of two pretty 
lyrics from the poet to his beloved wife, and feels 
bound in fairness to state that for the prose trans- 
lation from the German he is indebted to ano- 
ther. 

TO CIDLI, ASLEEP. 

She slumbers. — O blessed sleep, rain from thy wings 
Thy life-giving balm on her delicate frame ; 

And send thou from Eden's ambrosial springs 
A few flashing drops of their crystallous flame, — 

Then spread them, soft painter, upon her white cheek 
Where sickness hath eaten the roses away ; 

Love's gentle refresher. Care's comforter meek. 
Thou moon of sweetblessings,pour down the kindray 

To smile on my Cidli : she sleeps, — O be still, 
Hush'd be thy soft-flowing notes, O my lyre. 

Thy laurels mine anger shall scathe and shall kiU, 
If thou waken with murmurs my sleeping desire. 



KLOPSTOCK. 311 

ON A LIKE OCCASION. 

Asleep in the shade T found her : 
With a garland of roses I bound her 
She knew not what chain, was around her 
But slept with placid cheek : 

I look'd on her ; and my being 
Was ravish'd with that sweet seeing, 
I felt as if life was fleeing, 

I felt, and could not speak. 

I struggled to whisper, — she heard not ; 
I shook the rose-garland, — she stirr'dnot; 
I look'd, and my heart it err'd not ; — 

She woke from her beauteous sloth : 

She look'd on me ; and her being 
Was ravish 'd with that dear seeing ; 
We felt as if earth was fleeing, 

And heaven about us both. 



312 



^ e n ^ # ^. 

Well hast thou done thy duty, gallant son ; 

What truer fame can greet a mortal's ear 
Than duty's task heroically done ? — 
So are they hail'd, who better crowns have won : 

Thou, to the patriot's soul so justly dear, 

O let us blot thy failings with a tear, 
And read alone the record of thy worth ; 

Man without pride, or hate, or fraud, or fear, 
Who banish'd discord, and gave peace to earth, 

Thine was the generous heart, though gentle, brave, 

The will to bless, the godlike power to save : 
What nobler paean can the poet raise ? 

A glorious life, an honourable grave, 
Trafalgar, and Aboukir, be thy praise ! 



NELSON. 313 



The last words of Nelson were alike worthy of the 
hero and of the Christian, — " I have done my duty; 
I thank God for it:" a just confidence and rare 
humility truly characteristic of the man. It is im- 
possible to estimate too highly the services of Nelson, 
in destroying by his providential victories the fiery 
dragons of anarchy and atheism which then ravaged re- 
publican Europe : but for this illustrious agent of di- 
vine mercy we of fair Britain might now be groaning 
under the double yoke of foreign tyranny and reli- 
gious persecution. 

The private faults of Nelson admit of much palli- 
ation ; but even were it otherwise his public virtues 
were of so gigantic a growth, that the aggregate re- 
collections of him should be unmixed goodness and 
glory : who, in admiring a fine forest oak, thinks for 
a moment of the briar at its foot ? 

In reference to the character " man without pride," 
it should be remembered that Nelson's alleged foible 
was vanity; from pride no one could be freer; he 
was accessible and affable to the humblest : and even 
much of his imputed vanity may unstrainedly be as- 
cribed to his proper feelings about rank and honour. 
Nelson's breast was not covered with stars and orders 
for mere show ; but he loved to acknowledge a pro- 

p 



314 NELSON. 

vidence in his glories, and to show his country that 
he valued her esteem. 

The expressions, " without fraud, or fear," will be 
admitted instantaneously in respect of a man who 
served every body's interest but his own, and who knew 
not what fear was ; but the " without hate," will ap- 
pear a very paradox to those who remember that our 
great admiral used to tell his midshipmen to " hate a 
Frenchman as they did the devil." This hatred how- 
ever was not personal, but political ; revolutionary 
France was Nelson's just abhorrence ; yet while he 
hunted her navies from sea to sea, launching his de- 
stroying thunders like a wrathful Jove, he knew well, 
as we have already seen in Marcellus, how to 
pity and to spare the individual foes: no act of 
cruelty, no exterminating massacre, no needless 
bloodshed stained his bright career : that hatred was 
directed against an organized system of evil and ter- 
ror, and, for the sole sake of good and security, 
against the lives of its earthly agents. Hate a revo- 
lutionist, — -a Danton, a Marat, a Robespierre, a Fou- 
quier-Tinville, — as the devil ; for they are of their 
father the devil, and the lusts of their fatlier will they 
do : but in the routed, the drowning, or the captive, 
spare, save, love even le citoyen Fran^ais. So spake 
Nelson in his actions. 

" The wooden walls of old England" were once 
her bulwarks by sea, and a stalwarth yeomanry her 
defence by land. But those halcyon times are over. 
Liberal policy, presuming on the absurdity of perpe- 



NELSON. 315 

tual peace, heedless of man's combative disposition, 
and scouting the phrase " this present evil world," 
has long discountenanced anything which savours of 
war. It is true, that, as a matter of worldly gain, it 
is still generously permitted ; mercenaries are ex- 
cusable on the ground of value received: but the 
puerile bubbles of exclusive patriotism, (saving al- 
ways the claim of intestine disaffection,) have been 
long exploded. If our marine brethren of France 
insult us, we must bear it with fraternal humility; if 
a Russian navy hover about seas once our empire, we 
must meet them with all the courtesy of a kind Cosmo- 
polite : in the midst of hostile preparation we must 
complacently look on, and hope to advance a social 
millennium by lulling our lion into slumber with the 
lamb. Meanwhile, and unto the same good end, we 
command that the plough-share be no more turned 
into the sword, nor interchangeably the spear into 
the pruning-hook ; — go to, — the days of strife are 
ended, behold ! the age of gold must be brought in. 
It is true, the bayonet is necessary, and an universal 
system of constraint more than expedient, — at home; 
our distant liberality overlooks all nearer objects, so 
we give the hand of fellowship to those whom our 
testy fathers counted enemies, and, retributively just, 
treat our own household as foes: Charity begins 
abroad ; we reserve the cutlas and the bludgeon for 
starving Britons. Not so was it in the better olden- 
times, when the distinctions between rich and poor, 
high and low, were — despite our boasted levellings, — 



316 NELSON. 

marked out less invidiously; when there actually- 
existed more true union among all ranks; when, from 
the proper and harmonizing principles of subjection 
and a regular gradation of dependence, there was 
more practical equality than brute force ever can at- 
tain; when the sun of kindness or of gratitude 
softened men into more brotherly freedom than the 
howling winds of riot ever can compel. — Alas, for 
England ! her oak is cankered at the heart, the 
symptoms of her fall are gross upon the sight; the 
history of the world forewarns her dissolution, she 
is going the way of all nations, — " Suis et ipsa Roma 
viribus ruit." 



317 



O BRIGHTER conquests in a better cause, 

O nobler champion, O diviner fame ! 

To the dear honours of thy sainted name 
A hallowing sympathy my spirit draws ; 

Come in, thou holy happy one, come in ! 
Why standest thou without, — triumphant shade, 

Who well hast battled Misery and Sin, 
And of the wilderness a garden made. 

So blessing man, though meanest ? — witness, Alps, 

That rear o'er Dormeilleuse your icy scalps, 
Witness, thou church of ages, thither driven, 

A partridge hunted to the glacier chill, 
Witness the pastor's praise, approving heaven, — 

Witness it, earth ! — Henceforth, my harp, be still. 



p 3 



318 FELIX NfeFF. 



To the successful warrior by land or by sea, our 
debt as patriots and members of society is doubtless 
very great, but to him who leads the van in the army 
of good against spiritual and moral evil, our obli- 
gations may truly be considered infinite. Such an 
one was Felix Neff, a modem name now worthily 
associated with all that Protestants venerate in the 
ancient church of the Waldenses. Full of zeal for 
religion, and burning with the sacred fire of philan- 
thropy, careless of health, wealth, or personal com- 
forts, the noble youth devoted his life to an exile 
more honourable than a throne : among the poorest, 
meanest, and most uncivilized of Europeans clothed 
in sheepskins and living in mud hovels, in the midst 
of scenes whose mountain grandeur is forgotten in 
their desolate sterility, where the brightest sun melts 
not the snow, and the storm, or torrent, or avalanche 
threatens continual death, toiled, for many years of 
self-inflicted penury and disease, this generous mar- 
tyr in the cause of humanity. To their young pas- 
tor those primitive Alpines owed every thing ; from 
" la culture des pommes-de-terre," to the rustic 
bridge, from the humblest menial instruction to cot- 
tage architecture, fi:om the formation of a mountain 
road, to the remov^al of those yet rockier stumbling- 



FELIX NEFF. 319 

blocks that crowd the path to everlasting life, the de- 
scendants of those 

" slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie bleaching on the'Alpine mountains cold," 

were indebted to one ardent and consumptive youth 
for all things that pertain either to life, or godli- 
ness. 

And here, for our social instruction, let us take 
note of Neff's enlarged plan of education. He was 
not satisfied with teaching peasants merely to read 
and write ; he thought it little charity to make use- 
less scholars of men, who must hardly earn their 
daily bread ; he felt his duty was not complete by 
giving the herdsman's son an education which, if 
unaccompanied by a knowledge more appropriate to 
his station, would only unfit him for the toilsome 
business of life : but, when the school-door was shut, 
when the little church built by himself no longer 
poured the prayer to heaven, as a censer of sweet 
savour on a hill, the humble pastor of the High 
Alps might be seen working on the road with a 
pickaxe, or in some newly reclaimed comer of a val- 
ley teaching its happier occupant to trench, to plant, 
to reap : nay, he encouraged and recommended the 
men to net, and the women to sew in the very 
church, (though not on the sabbath,) that while with 
their ears they were hearing the Gospel preached to 
the poor, with their hands they might be honestly 
providing for the needs of humbler manhood. 

How fair a picture of unsophisticated Christi- 



320 FELIX NEFF. 

anity: alas, now that he is dead, ( — " who would 
not weep for Lycidas ?" — Rather with Bion, Aei 
(7£ TToXiv KXavaai, iraXiv ac £roc aWo Sa/cputrai,)— 
how dreadful a gloom broods above Dormeilleuse, 
how dark a morn has broke upon Val Fressiniere : 
truly, in the untaught poetry of those sorrowing pea- 
sants — " a gust of wind has extinguished the torch, 
which should have guided them across the preci- 
pice." Yet, not quite so cheerless is the scene : he 
that was " lovely in his life" has left behind him 
many likeminded, who still labour in carrying out 
his schemes of divine philanthropy. Such men as 
Martyn, Oberlin and Neff are in their deaths mar- 
tyr's blood, the seed of truth, charity, and religion, 
that yet shall bear " an hundredfold." 

" Henceforth, my harp, be still," — like the fabled 
canorus ales, which died with the echoes of its 
sweetest song, in the midst of recollections so me- 
lodious to the heart rightly attuned, and while the 
music of so faultless a character yet lingers in thy 
strings, here let thine hymning cease. It may be 
long ere again thou shalt awaken with a ^^ poscimui- :" 
for we live at a time, when Poetry, like her holy elder 
sister Religion, finds few congenialities around with 
her own spiritual essence, — an age of short-sighted 
expediency, of infidel utilitarianism, of accounting 
man more as the human animal, than a moral being 
born for immortality. We are " fallen on the evil 
days and evil men" of mercantile maxims ; the ' cui 
bono ?' in every one's mouth is a question that 



FELIX NEFF. 821 

searches no farther than the body's good; we are 
taught to account of fame as " words, and words but 
wind," heedless that in " the noble minds," the 
greatest characters, it is the very might and main- 
spring of good, — " the spur which the clear spirit 
doth raise ;" we no longer think it honour, " mon- 
strari digito praetereuntium Fidicen," because in the 
gross reaping of daily cares and daily comforts we 
forget the delicate harvest growing up in the intel- 
lect and affections : many a bruised reed, there 
breathing out cassia, dies under the weight of com- 
mon worldliness : the dock with its rank leaves 
hideth the sun from violets. 

But, now, albeit the Preacher saith " Of making 
books there is no end," and that probably " the 
world could not contain books which might be writ- 
ten," yet happily there may be an end of one : we 
must hasten to our goal, ever a happy consummation ; 
for, " Better is the end of a thing, than the beginning 
thereof," and a most wise heathen hath said, 
r}^v TO TeXog, — sweet is the end, — for sweet is every 
fulfilment. Our brief list, our seventy, our septuagint 
of worthies, w^ith One above the seventy, is complete : 
we have eschewed the fjieya /3t/3Xiov, for all axe 
agreed that a great book is a great evil : we have 
endeavoured to be of a Catholic yet honest spirit, and 
by exhibiting excellence and varieties of gifts in 
persons of all ages and of all countries, to subserve 
the honour of Universal Man ; and everywhere our 
aim has been Truth. If so vast an induction of 



322 FELIX NEFF. 

superior humanity excite not some to Go and do 
likewise, — the force of good example is fabulous, 
our faith, and our labour alike are vain. 

So, with an English word from the prince of rhe- 
toricians, Aristotle, let the foregoing greetings take 
their leave of the reader with credit; " We have 
spoken," — we hope, justly ; " you have heard," — we 
trust, favourably ; ^' you have us" — at your mercy, 
" judge us" — in your candour : ''Eiprjica, ciKVKoaTi, 



THE END. 



Joseph Rickerby, Printer, Shcrbourr Lane. 



ALSO 

BY MR. TUPPER, 
AND PUBLISHED BY JOSEPH RICKERBY, 



SHEEBOURN LANE. 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY, 

A BOOK OF THOUGHTS AND ARGUMENTS, 

©riginallg ^uatct). 

Second Edition, Enlarged, Price 6s. 



" There is more novelty in the sentiments, a greater sweep of subjects, and a finer sense 
of moral beauty displayed by Mr. Tupper, than we remember to have seen in any work of 
its class, excepting of course the Proverbs of Solomon. We also discover in his Philosophy 
the stores of extensive reading, and the indisputable proofs of habitual and devout reflection, 
as well as the workings of an elegant mind." — Month!}/ Review. 

" This is one of the most original and curious productions of our time. — The volume may 
be strongly recommended for the originality of the conceptions, the exquisite choice, and ap- 
propriate employment of the language, the richness and profusion of the imagest and the le- 
ligious and solemn tone of the truths it inculcates."— ^Was. 

"Almost every page is replete with good feeling, sound sense, and mature wisdom : — the 
only living writer between whose mind and the author's there may be said to exist any 
resemblance, is, perhaps, Wordsworth." — Church of England Quarterly. 

" A book as full of sweetness as a honey-comb, of gentleness as a woman's heart ;— in its 
wisdom worthy the disciple of a Solomon, in its genius the child of a Milton." — Court 
Journal. 

" Rarely have we met with a work which bears the impress of thought so clearly stamped 
on every sentence, never have we seen one which conferred more honour on its author, with 
regard both to execution and design." — Parthenon. 



ALSO, BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 

GEEALDINE, 

A SEQUEL TO COLERIDGE'S CHRISTABEL, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 

In Post 8vo. 7s. 



*' Mr. Tupper takes up the tale where Coleridge left off, and skilfully connects his own 
story with the original, as well as imitates its wildness of style and images with a felicity, 
which nothing but a long and enthusiastic acquaintance with his prototype could impart"— 
Spectator. 

"This book abundantly vindicates the anticipations we expressed in our notice of the 
' Provei'bial Philosophy,' and entitles the author to a distinguished place among the few 
cotemporary poets who are likely to survive their own day." — Atlas. 

" We congratulate ourselves, for the sake of our land's language, on this noble addition 
to her stock of what Dr. Johnson j ustly esteems ♦ the highest order of learning.' ''—Parthenon. 

" A singular command of wild imagery, and rapid transitions from one strange fancy to 
another, that would not have been unworthy of Coleridge himself. — We could not by any 
conjecture name a living author from whom we could expect a sequel equally felicitous." — 
Monthly Review, 



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